The New Orleans Pelicans can learn from the Toronto Raptors

The New Orleans Pelicans are desperately trying to build a winning culture in the Crescent City, and taking a look at what the Toronto Raptors have built in the frozen tundra could go a long way to achieving that goal.

The New Orleans Pelicans are saying all of the right things, but there is still little confidence in the team’s improvement as the NBA calendar nears yet another flip. From the the top of the organization to the players themselves, everyone seems to be paving their own path instead of helping each other along a collective one. For inspiration, the Pelicans should turn their gaze North (far, far, far North. It actually snows there) to see how another small market team went from laughing stock to battling the vaunted Miami Heat in the playoffs.

The march to relevance for the Toronto Raptors can largely be attributed to the arrival of Dwane Casey, a well respected, career coach that had just won a championship with the Dallas Mavericks. Coming into leadership of a team that had just lost their megastar, Chris Bosh, one season prior to the allure of South Beach, Dwane Casey was tasked with crafting a new culture based around the young and raw DeMar DeRozan and the shiny new draft pick, Jonas Valanciunas. It took a few seasons, but Casey succeeded in maximizing the skill set of the young DeRozan, whose game resembles something that would have been much more at home on the hardwood of the 1990s.

The next piece of the puzzle was Kyle Lowry, a player whose reputation as a locker room cancer was largely overblown. After acquiring him for a future first round pick, the Raptors gave Lowry an environment he could truly thrive in. After being personally challenged by general manager Masai Uriji (who was hired in 2013), Lowry became a force on both ends of the floor and embraced his role as the commander on the hardwood.

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After establishing a second star in Kyle Lowry, the Raptors focused on moves around the edges to build a formidable, compete team. Players like Patrick Patterson, Bismack Biyombo and DeMarre Carroll are not stars in their own right, but they each fill very specific roles that can push a team over the top of the mountain. While the Raptors have yet to reach the summit, at least they’ve made significant progress. The Pelicans are still in the foothills.

The parallels between the two teams are not hard to find. Dwane Casey and Alvin Gentry, although representing vastly differing styles, are both respected as capable coaches and leaders. If Dell Demps does end up packing his desk into a brown box and walking to his car outside of the facility on Airline one final time, the new general manager would also find himself in a situation similar to Masai Uriji, assuming Alvin Gentry is not given the axe as well (which seems ludicrous).

Unlike the Raptors’ situation with DeRozan, though, the Pelicans do not need to craft a scheme to fit their best young player. Anthony Davis is already a transcendent superstar that can seemingly succeed in any environment, and that puts the Pelicans on track to rapidly accelerate the process of building a contending team. Couple that with the fact the Pelicans’ version of Kyle Lowry may already be on the roster (that Jrue Holiday guy is pretty good) and the Pelicans should be able to put this in gear sooner rather than later.