Time to Kayo, K.O.?

With another season quickly turning sour north of the border, it's time to ask a tough question.

Is Kevin O'Neill really up for the job for the Toronto Raptors?

In many ways it's a very unfair question. O'Neill is in his first season as an NBA head coach and he lacks a true center and a point-guard -- it's tough enough in the NBA without one, let alone both.

However, one truth is unavoidable -- O'Neill has shown an inability to adjust his style to the players available.

O'Neill comes from the Rick Carlise/Jeff Van Gundy school of coaching -- use a hard-nosed defense to shackle the opponent, a micro-managed efficient offense to minimize turnovers and use large chunks of the shot clock to keep scores low.

When they started the season, Toronto was undeniably short of talent. Yet O'Neill still managed to guide the Raptors to an 8-8 record, largely due to the fact that the team he had was well suited to mucking and grinding. O'Neill's plan? Keep the game close so that Vince Carter could dominate the final five minutes and bring the Raps a W. As plans go, it was a decent one.

Then the make-up changed. Raptor GM Glen Grunwald subtracted defensive stalwarts Antonio Davis and Jerome Williams and added more scoring in Jalen Rose and Donyell Marshall.

For the first six games it was magical. The new look Raps used an incredibly unselfish offensive game to average 102 points during a season where they have averaged an NBA low 84.3.

In five of the six games, at least one Raptor had double digit assist totals. They scored over 25 points in a quarter 13 times in that stretch, and in one memorable fourth quarter comeback against Seattle the Raps went for 38.

It looked like Dallas North. Take a undersized team and make them into a run and gun shoot'em up threat.

Why not? Carter and Rose are both proven 20 point commodities. Marshall revealed a threatening inside-out game, drilling three-pointers, and using his quickness to get buckets in the paint. Chris Bosh was developing his offensive game, and Morris Peterson found his three-point stroke further spreading defenses.

In those games, Carter was great, he averaged 25.2 points per game, 4.7 rebounds per game and 7.0 assists per game. Outstanding all around numbers for a player whose court-vision rarely gets enough press.

Toronto went 5-1 in those games -- the one loss was a 114-111 shoot-out against the Celtics in which the Raps came within a rim-out of going to OT.

I was at the first Boston game where the Raps hit 17 three pointers setting a team-high. The energy and excitement in the building were incredible.

Even though the crowd knew the Raps didn't have the post-size to win anything, it didn't matter. The rest of the year looked like it would be filled with exciting fast paced ball. It looked like Toronto would make the post-season in the East as the team nobody wanted to face, win a round, maybe even two. With cap room looming the Raps might have a shot at a veteran big-man, and then -- who knew?

Of course it couldn't last, but even the next seven games seemed to be a good omen. The Raps went 2-5 but still averaged 92 points (that included a 73-70 loss to San Antonio where O'Neill understandably went to the slow-down game). In that span, except for a shoot-out that got away from them against Dallas, the Raps never lost any game by more than nine points, that one, a poor effort against Orlando.

In other words fine-tuning was the order of the day.

It was no secret that O'Neill was not crazy about this style of play, but he didn't have the players to implement his system. So, he seemed to recognize that allowing the Raps to use this free-flowing offense made sense. At the same time his taskmaster approach was helping Toronto to tighten up defensively at the two must critical junctures of an NBA game -- the last five minutes of each half.

However, things started to change the night the Raps battled to a hard fought 81-72 win over the Denver Nuggets. In the 29 games that followed, the Raps have broken the 100-point barrier just twice. Toronto has failed to score over 80 points 14 times in that span. Yes, you read that right -- 14 times! In only the last six of those games has Toronto been without the services of Rose and Carter, whose absence provides a legitimate excuse for such an extreme lack of scoring.

During this skid Toronto has shied away from the open approach, the 2-5 stretch seemed to be the excuse O'Neill needed to convince the franchise that they couldn't win that way. Toronto has now returned to the clawing and scraping on defense, which is fine. However, the team has also returned to the extremely defined offense, where O'Neill calls the majority of the plays.

With a team that is best suited to an up-tempo game due to a solid collection of excellent athletes and a lack of size, O'Neill has decided to force the square peg into the proverbial round hole. As half-court set after half-court set is smothered by opponents the Raptors frustration has increased.

Add to this O'Neill's strange bench usage (lacking team size, why not bury 6-11 Jerome Moiso so deep that even "CSI-Miami" couldn't find him?), and it is easy to see why players like Lamond Murray have gone to the press to vent their feelings.

It still strikes me as strange that a scoring wing-man who had showed a willingness to adapt to O'Neill's system like Murray should be unable to find the floor. Why not use Murray as an option on days when Carter or Peterson were struggling with their shot?

If Murray comes out and hits shots, great let him play 5-10 minutes, If not, well, you tried to make the opposing team adjust.

With Moiso, while the Frenchman has certainly made his mistakes, he has also shown stretches of solid shooting. With wispy rookie Bosh having suffered multiple injuries so far this season the lack of playing time for Moiso, if only to spell Toronto's most valuable asset, is all but unforgivable.

At other times O'Neill will put a line-up on the floor that is completely overmatched. At one game I attended, the Raps down by eight late in the third, had Robert Archibald, Michael Curry, Milt Palacio, Moiso and Peterson on the floor. With Carter, Marshall and Alvin Williams all sitting on the bench.

The new "fab-five" predictably failed to make a run and the game was all but over. It was almost cruel to watch those five players attempt to score -- not a single one has demonstrated a consistent ability to generate their own shot, yet they were left for several minutes to try to just that.

At that point it seemed like the earlier success was a tasteless joke. A brief peek of what NBA basketball could be like. That it could involve movement, and passes, and scoring, and not just an endless series of late in the clock pressured jumpers, and ugly garbage baskets.

I cannot fault O'Neill for wanting to instill a defensive conscience. I can fault him for taking a team that had shown an ability to compete in a more wide open setting, and forcing them into a system that nullifies many of their advantages. That's just poor coaching.

Playing heavy minutes to a thin rookie when you have post players (Moiso and now Michael Bradley) rotting on the bench? Poor coaching.

The Raps are not going to be able to become a Detroit Pistons squad overnight, hell, they may never be able to find a Ben Wallace style player. What they do seem to have is several athletic players who have shown a willingness to move the ball and to hunker down defensively in the crunch.

If O'Neill continues to insist on micro-managing this team to the extent that he has, then he will have shown a glaring inability to recognize his team's strengths. Moreso he will have traded flawed but entertaining basketball for flat out flawed basketball.

As a member of the paying public, that's the real issue, and it's the reason why O'Neill's place in the organization, or at the very least his strict adherence to system over reality, must be questioned.