DeMarre Carroll says there was a lack of trust among the Toronto Raptors last season in a locker room divided by players who preferred two different styles of play.
Carroll made his comments to the Toronto Sun on Monday as he discussed the trade that will send him to the Brooklyn Nets. Carroll told the Sun that he expected to be traded last year, as he was unhappy with the Raptors' style of play.
He said some Raptors preferred an isolation style, deferring to stars Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, while others wanted a more team-oriented approach.
"It's hard to just change it all of a sudden. It's a culture thing," Carroll told the newspaper. "You have to build it from the ground up, and that's what we did in Atlanta. We built the [culture] moving the ball and trusting each other."
Carroll, an eight-year veteran, averaged 11.8 points per game during a two-season stint in Atlanta (2013-14 and 2014-15).
General manager Masai Ujiri and coach Dwane Casey have talked about changing the Raptors' style to a team-oriented attack for the 2017-18 season after Toronto was swept by the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs. Carroll told the Sun he would "love to see it [work]" but said it will be tough to implement.
"Once adversity hits and stuff starts going wrong, guys are going to go back to ISO basketball. That's how it is," Carroll said. "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 we wanted to go]."
