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Andrew LopezESPN
For Sergio Scariolo this was just another match.
The Toronto Raptors assistant coach slipped into the head coach’s seat and led the team to a 122-111 victory over the Houston Rockets in Tampa Bay on Friday night. The win came despite Toronto being without star Pascal Siakam, head coach Nick Nurse and five other Raptors assistants due to health and safety protocols.
But even with Toronto with another assistant in Chris Finch, who became the head coach in Minnesota earlier this week, the Raptors still had a pretty experienced guy on the bench to get the job done.
Scariolo has 25 years of coaching experience abroad and has been the head coach of the Spanish national team since 2009, winning the FIBA Eurobasket tournament three times (2009, 2011 and 2015) and the FIBA World Cup (2019). He also coached Spain to a silver medal in the 2012 Olympics and a bronze medal in the 2016 Olympics.
So no, this wasn’t his first rodeo.
In fact, Scariolo was still head coach last week when he coached Spain for the Eurobasket qualifiers in Poland on February 19-21. Spain won both games.
“It’s been a 3-0 week,” said Raptors security guard Kyle Lowry.
Originally quarantined this week after returning from Poland, Scariolo became available to rejoin the team on Friday, just as health and safety protocols shut down the technical staff. Scariolo said he was back from Poland on Monday and was away from the Raptors for the rest of the week. He drove to Miami, where the Raptors played on Wednesday, but remained separate from the team; he drove back to Tampa in the same car the day after the race.
Scariolo said the team started on Thursday with a plan to move into action, with the Raptors assigning duties to the coaches who could still be with the team on Friday morning. The team also had to tweak its pregame routine because the tests didn’t come back in time, so the Raptors had to have one joint movie session before hitting the ground with no run-through.
“So it responded to something different every time, but at the end of the day we got the W, so who cares,” said Scariolo.
Scariolo said he had a video call with Nurse before the game and thanked Nurse’s philosophy and the teamwork he taught the technical staff to make the transition as smooth as possible. He also attributed his own experience as a head coach.
“To be honest, it didn’t feel too much of a difference from the 1,500 games I’ve coached before,” said Scariolo. “I felt that we were prepared to enter the game because everyone has contributed and that’s what it takes in a team sport like basketball.”
Lowry and guard Fred VanVleet tried to downplay the situation as much as possible, but Lowry made sure to grab the ball after the buzzer and present it to Scariolo after the game. Scariolo said basketball will go alongside other balls that players have given him after medal games or other championships throughout his career.
VanVleet said the team tried to keep things the same as much as possible so as not to try to correct something that didn’t need to be corrected.
“I think I got the hang of that pretty early when they decided those coaches would clearly leave. I didn’t want to overreact,” said VanVleet. “I think it’s one of those things you probably put a little too much into, but the game doesn’t change.
“The way we should play doesn’t change. The way we play doesn’t change. So if you have a different voice, you obviously have a strong coaching staff for situations like this. It’s clear that Sergio has been a great head coach for a long time. He’s doing it at a high level, so hooking it up was pretty easy to do. ”
The Raptors did not release the names of the coaches who missed the game, but Jim Sann, Jamaal Magloire and Mark Tyndale were spotted along the Raptors’ bench and were given shoutouts by VanVleet and Lowry after the game.
Scariolo said he doesn’t know how long he will serve as acting head coach, adding that the team will continue to operate on the fly until it knows more. Although he had talked to the nurse before the game, he hadn’t talked to him before meeting reporters after the game. There were more important things to be settled first.
“I’ll make sure to get tested first, this is my first test and I don’t want to make a mistake now,” he said. ‘We can not afford it. Then we will certainly talk. ‘