When Bryan Colangelo and Dwane Casey met with the media for year-end interviews on Monday, the word of the day was process.
Looking at the season that was, there really wasn’t any other option. With both parties still waiting to see if they will be around next season, the interviews were about how the season unfolded, while also becoming a presentation of sorts, an explanation of why each should be back to finish the job that was started two seasons ago.
What was most surprising, as detailed by sportsnet.ca’s Michael Grange, was the loyalty Casey and Colangelo expressed in their desire to both be given the opportunity to return together.
In looking at another disappointing season where the team missed the playoffs for the fifth-straight year (five straight under Colangelo’s watch, two for Casey), the pair pointed to the rough schedule to start the year aiding in the 4-19 start, the plethora of injuries the team faced dating back to training camp and the trade that required time to adjust to.
Colangelo didn’t dance around his support of Casey either. Perhaps most importantly, he gave a glimpse into the thoughts of the players on the team at the conclusion of another postseason-less year.
“The players in the locker room respect Dwane Casey,” Colangelo said. “They respect the way he approaches the game and respect his thoughts and ideals as do we as an organization. That is why he is going to be back — because he’s the right coach for this basketball team.”
He also shed some light on where the team will be looking moving forward when he talked about the exit interviews that both coach and GM hold with each player before he leaves town for the offseason.
“The thing that jumped out most, probably more than anything, is that they all look at DeMar (DeRozan) and Rudy (Gay) as kind of the focal point of the team in terms of what they’re capable of doing,” he said.
While there was skepticism over how the two wing players would complement each other’s game, so far they have played well off of one another. That chemistry on the floor has transferred off of it as well.
In addition to DeRozan and Gay, the other veteran presence on the team who will need to be better next season is Kyle Lowry. After an up-and-down season, it seems that both Casey and Colangelo have accepted him for the player he is, faults and all.
“Kyle is not a perfect basketball player but he does a lot of things where, when he handles it right, he’s pretty good,” Colangelo said. “There’s a growing up process in that for everyone. He’s still a young player and learning his way and learning to handle adversity like he did this year, and how to handle success when he’s handed an opportunity, how to be a leader, and that’s all things that come with playing that role.”
Casey also spoke about his point guard, stressing that the relationship between the two wasn’t ever contentious, while also shouldering some of the blame for Lowry’s struggles to find a balance between scorer and distributor.
“There’s a lot been made about Kyle and I hitting heads and going at each other,” Casey said. “The one thing I was guilty of with Kyle is, and I probably hindered him a little bit, was making sure he got the ball to DeMar first and then to Jonas rolling to the basket because we have all those weapons. Kyle’s strength and his gift is attacking the rim, attacking the basket and his stubbornness and his toughness is also a gift. And anytime you have that combination, again, it was never the part where contentions were we weren’t talking, we weren’t speaking.”
While there is often some degree of truth in stories that will not go — which was the case with rumours of Casey and Lowry butting heads at various points this season — Casey was adamant that the player-coach relationship between the two was fine.
What else could he say, though? With both Colangelo and Casey just trying to get to next season, each has to be willing to work with what they’ve got. In sticking to the script and hoping to be given the opportunity to push forward with their plan to build this team into a playoff contender, each discussed how the team had fared compared to preseason expectations that were placed upon it.
Despite the disastrous start, the trade and the undoing in March, this is a team that finished with four fewer victories than the eighth place team in the Eastern Conference. Somehow, despite the stumbles — and there were many — the year yielded results that were pretty close with preseason projections.
This despite a nightmare of a season for Andrea Bargnani, Linas Kleiza being little more than a body on the bench thanks to injury, Landry Fields needing surgery on his shooting arm and Lowry being in and out of the lineup all season with his own collection of injuries.
They missed the playoffs by four games despite starting the season with a rookie in the starting lineup who had little idea what he was doing. Despite a stretch in November where Dominic McGuire was waived to make way for Mickael Pietrus because that was how desperate the depleted team was for some offence.
It was not a pretty year. It should not be praised. It did end relatively close to where we all assumed that it would. Because of these things there is a solid chance that Monday’s year-end interviews were as much apologies for what went wrong from the pair who will remain in charge as they were final words from either.