It wasn’t a wild celebration — although a water-drenched assistant coach Rex Kalamian might have felt differently — but there was a sense of pride coursing through the Toronto Raptors locker room when the inevitable occurred Sunday night.
Dwane Casey and his staff had just earned the right to coach the LeBron James-led team at next month’s NBA all-star game by virtue of Toronto’s 123-111 pasting of the Los Angeles Lakers, and while it was bound to happen everyone was glad that it had, if for no other reason than the measure of validation it gives Casey, the players, the program.