The Toronto Raptors lacked trust last season, according to DeMarre Carroll.
The Raptors locker room was divided. That contributed to last year's downfall: https://t.co/KkjJUtrLCP
— Ryan Wolstat (@WolstatSun) July 10, 2017
Carroll, who was recently dealt to the Brooklyn Nets in a salary dump, says Toronto also played far too much isolation basketball.
The 51-31 Raps finished third in the Eastern Conference standings, and were swept out of the Playoffs by the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Per the Toronto Sun:
“I wasn’t surprised because I knew it was a lot of things going on last year that didn’t come out,” Carroll told Postmedia on Sunday in his first interview following the deal.
“I wasn’t happy, my agent, we thought the style of ball was going to be different, it was going to be more team-oriented, but I guess it was still ISO, so I thought they would have moved me last year, but that didn’t happen.”
After the Raptors got swept by Cleveland, president Masai Ujiri, head coach Dwane Casey and others spoke of finally altering the style to a more team-oriented, three-point shooting approach which more closely matches the way the game is played by most teams these days.
“They say they’re going to try something different, I would love to see it (work). It’s always good to do it,” [Carroll] said, adding he believes they will start the season trying to stick to the new plan.
“But once adversity hits and stuff starts going wrong, guys are going to go back to ISO basketball, that’s how it is. You’ve got to trust it. It’s one of those things you’ve got to build, you’ve just got to trust each other. This year, I feel like a lot of guys didn’t trust each other and a lot of guys, they didn’t feel like other guys could produce or (be) given the opportunity, so there was a lot of lack of trust on our team, so that’s what hindered us from going (as far as they wanted to go).”
