While Masai Ujiri and the Toronto Raptors have been quiet about who will stay and who will go from the Toronto Raptors front office and coaching staff, the NBA continues to move.
On Friday afternoon media outlets in New York reported that Raptors assistant coach Eric Hughes would be leaving the team to join the staff of first-year head coach Jason Kidd in Brooklyn. With the contracts of Toronto’s assistant coaches expiring on June 30th, there will be more news in the days ahead about the destinations of the rest of the staff.
When Dwane Casey spoke with the media after it was announced that he would remain with the team next season, he said there would be changes to his coaching staff without identifying who would or would not be staying.
Hughes, an Oakland native, spent six years with the Raptors. He joined the team in 2007 as a basketball development consultant and was promoted to assistant coach/basketball development in the summer of 2009. He has coached the team’s summer league squad and regularly spent off seasons working with younger players on their development.
The move to Brooklyn makes sense for Hughes. He was an assistant at the University of California when Kidd played there. When the New York Knicks came through Toronto in mid-March this past season, it was Kidd’s birthday. Kidd and Hughes had a moment to catch up prior to the game in the Knicks locker room.
That moment was detailed by The Record’s Steve Popper here:
“When he arrived at the Air Canada Centre on Friday, Raptors assistant coach Eric Hughes, who was an assistant at the University of California when the Golden Bears were recruiting Kidd, handed him a gift — a T-Shirt with a photo of a high-school-aged Kidd surrounded by recruiting letters and a copy of the itinerary from his recruiting visit to Cal.”
In March there wasn’t any thought that Kidd would be a head coach by July, but Hughes’ gesture spoke to the relationship and connection between the two. From coaching Kidd at Cal to joining his coaching staff in Brooklyn, the Hughes/Kidd relationship serves as another example of both how cyclical this league is and how deep basketball connections run.
