Toronto Raptors still without a head coach and dithering could cost them

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The NBA Draft is less than two weeks away, do you know who your head coach is? Well, every NBA team, save one, does.

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That would be the Toronto Raptors, still looking for Nick Nurse’s replacement 49 days after franchise boss Masai Ujiri told the media he and his staff would begin to “attack the matter” and looked ahead to a busy summer.

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Though Ujiri did say at the time “I think having someone by the draft will make sense for us, that will make sense for us to go into that with a new head coach,” most observers figured the Raptors would have named Nurse’s successor long before June 22, when they’ll select 13th overall, the third-highest the team has picked in a decade.

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Whoever is drafted 13th (assuming there isn’t a trade to move up, down, or even out of the draft), projects as an important piece for the Raptors moving forward. So it stands to reason it would have been beneficial to have that player’s new coach in place to run (or at least closely study) on-court workouts and to get to know one of his key new pupils off the court as well.

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Alas, Toronto’s exhaustive search has prevented that.

The list of those connected to the opening has been long: There have been big names like Steve Nash, Ime Udoka, Jerry Stackhouse and Monty Williams, unconventional ones like Becky Hammon and JJ Redick, former Raptors assistants Adrian Griffin and Sergio Scariolo and current assistants elsewhere like Kenny Atkinson, David Adelman, Chris Quinn, Jordi Fernandez and Darko Rajakovic, amongst others.

Both Adelman and Quinn are still involved in the NBA Finals and Scariolo’s team is still competing in Europe, which theoretically would make the delay more understandable should one of them be the choice.

There’s still plenty of time for the successful candidate to get to know former NBA rookie of the year Scottie Barnes, considered the future face of the franchise. But the new coach has missed out already in being involved in a couple of months of Barnes’ summer improvement plan (recall that last year’s summer was seen as a bit of an airball for Barnes and a reason why he didn’t follow up his triumphant first season with a better sophomore campaign).

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The coming draft and plans for the current Raptors to get better aren’t the only things the new coach hasn’t had any input on. Free agency also fast approaches and three key Raptors — point guard Fred VanVleet, shooting guard Gary Trent Jr. and centre Jakob Poeltl — all will become unrestricted free agents at the end of this month.

That said, a handful of potential fits have surely given an opinion to team brass in interviews about how they’d make things work, whether all three free agents, or one, two, or even none, return.

That’s good, because it isn’t clear to anyone how this puzzle will be solved.

Do they bring back VanVleet, who will turn 30 mid-way through the season and try to thread the needle with him, team star Pascal Siakam (who turned 29 in April) and young Barnes (22 in August)? Perhaps with Trent (25 in January) and O.G. Anunoby (26 next month, but a free agent a year from now like Siakam)? Do they let VanVleet walk? Deal Siakam? Deal Anunoby and go younger?

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There are plenty of paths. It stands to reason a veteran coach makes more sense if they decline to take a step back via trade. Or, go with a young, developmental mind if the team retools around Barnes.

But it’s time to get this show on the road. Since the end of the season five teams have changed coaches.

There also has been a ton of brain drain in recent seasons, with some of the key cogs of the franchise’s once-vaunted player development system (Jama Mahlalela and Patrick Mutombo, most notably) leaving and now Nurse and Griffin heading to conference rivals, with offensive maestro Chris Finch — another former Nurse assistant — the head coach in Minnesota.

Sportsnet reported Friday that there are rumblings one of the two developmental Raptors coaches remaining, Rico Hines, who came aboard just last season and is close with Siakam, could join Nurse in Philadelphia.

This is a big decision for a franchise that needs to get back on track, but the clock is ticking and there are repercussions for dithering.

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