Before Jay Triano ever coached Chris Bosh or Steve Nash, he coached me. At 14, I was pudgy, slow and, quite possibly, the least promising player ever to attend his summer basketball camp in Vancouver. His time was less precious then. He could spare 20 minutes to watch a scrimmage in which I repeatedly coughed up the ball to a much nimbler opponent. At a break in play, he took me aside. “Next time he gets close to you, give him a shot,” Triano said, clenching his fist and punching the air. “One of these, right in the ribs. I used to do it to Isiah Thomas. He’ll start respecting your space.” Next play, I dribbled toward my smug foe. Just as he was about to swat the ball, I nailed him, but my strike was low. Much too low. The kid crumpled, hands cupped to his groin. I was ejected. I looked for Triano, but he’d already wandered off to another court.

That freakish intensity has been a hallmark of the three decades Triano has spent at the centre of Canada’s basketball firmament. His iron will was forged in Niagara Falls. As the son of a former national basketball team player and workaholic high school principal—“I always had a key to the gym,” he says—he spent hundreds of hours on the hardwood, honing one of the smoothest jump shots ever seen in this country. At Simon Fraser University in the late ’70s, Triano was a star guard and established his unorthodox training methods. Teammates would pack SFU’s Chancellor’s Gym to watch his solo practice sessions, a bizarre form of athletic pantomime in which he would simulate real-life game situations. “I would even pretend that the referee was beside me and then take the ball from him to shoot a foul shot,” he says. “I now do the same things as a coach.” Later, during practice at the Air Canada Centre, when he was head coach of the Canadian national team, Triano cranked up the thermostat and the music (to “passionate, crazy, loud” levels) in order to prepare players for a raucous summer tournament in Puerto Rico.

In 1981, the Los Angeles Lakers drafted him in the eighth round. But he never stood much chance of breaking into a backcourt that included the likes of Magic Johnson. “I knew I wasn’t ready,” he says of his decision to leave the team early. “And I didn’t want to give up my amateur status. That would have eliminated my opportunity to play in the Olympics.” Focusing on that, he eventually led the national team to the 1984 and 1988 Games. (He returned to the Olympics as a coach in 2000, which is the last time the Canadian team qualified.)

Then came his plodding climb up the coaching ranks: jobs with SFU, the national team, and the Vancouver Grizzlies, who arrived in the city in 1995. When the franchise fled for Memphis in 2001, Triano didn’t follow. Instead, the father of three—whose kids stayed on the west coast with his ex-wife—relocated to Toronto to work as a TSN commentator. A year later, the Toronto Raptors hired him as an assistant coach. The move was at first considered a shameless PR attempt to Canadianize the team—Triano is the first NBA coach to be born and trained in Canada—but he quickly proved his worth, forming close relationships with players and management, a rare accomplishment in a league of outsized egos. When Sam Mitchell’s grip on his job as Raptors head coach appeared shaky last year, several star players, including Andrea Bargnani, reportedly asked the GM, Bryan Colangelo, to confirm Triano as the replacement. “It was a bit of a surprise,” admits Triano.

Triano’s endearing lack of pretense was certainly an asset. He’s equally comfortable among a camp full of kids, a bench of egos or a room of suits. He’s a professor and a dude, fluent in chalk talk, musical theatre (he’s seen the stage production of Rent more than 10 times) and Nintendo games. That earns respect, and respect begets players willing to sweat for his approval. National squad teams under Triano often lacked skill, but not hustle. Steve Nash, his close friend and an NBA all-star, is the proto­typical Triano player: a generous passer, fierce defender and tireless grinder. Transplant that kind of heart into a team that boasts the supple hands of Chris Bosh and Bargnani and you have yourself a contender.

Discouragingly, last season’s heart transplant didn’t take. With Triano barking orders, the Raptors dropped 40 of the last 65 games, often in lackadaisical fashion. On too many nights, he was the only Raptor showing any fight at all; he even garnered an ejection in February for arguing a referee’s call. In a post-season press conference, Colangelo issued a clear challenge, calling the team “too nice.” The GM has since held up his end of the bargain, signing the rugged forward Reggie Evans. Now it’s up to Triano to cast a team in his own gutsy image.