TORONTO — Masai Ujiri is promising change.

It could be change in personnel. It could be a change of coaches. It’s definitely going to be a change in the way the Raptors play basketball.

Ujiri, now team president but still handling the GM duties in regards to media interactions, grudgingly carried out his annual year-end address Tuesday. We say grudgingly because he knew coming in there were very few definitives he could provide and, quite frankly, he didn’t see the point.

But that didn’t mean he didn’t tip his hand at all.

Ujiri confirmed he wants unrestricted free agent Kyle Lowry back. But Lowry, not Ujiri, has to decide if he wants to come back.

Ujiri did NOT say he wanted Dwane Casey back as his coach, but he didn’t say he didn’t want him back either. There was a level of commitment there to Casey, but the commitment didn’t feel super strong.

Ujiri is clearly still in conversation with the head coach who he calls “a phenomenal part of our success here, you know, and in some ways we owe that to him.”

But at the moment it feels like a 50-50 proposition that the Raptors bring Casey back. It could go either way.

Whether Casey comes back or doesn’t, you can say farewell to the brand of basketball Toronto has played the past four years.

“We are going to hold everybody accountable because we need to,” Ujiri said. “We need, after that performance (the Eastern Conference semifinal series sweep to Cleveland), we need a culture reset here.

“We need to figure it out. Yes, there’s been some success, but at the end of the day we are trying to win a championship here. To me making the playoffs is nothing. That was back in the day. Now we have to figure out how we can win in the playoffs. That’s the goal.”

Isolation basketball — or in Toronto’s case putting the ball in DeMar DeRozan's hands or Lowry’s hands and having them create something — is done.

There is going to be a greater emphasis/demand on ball movement, which in fairness we have seen in spurts but now it appears it’s going to be the every-game expectation.

That would qualify as a culture change and, according to Ujiri, Casey is already on board with that.

“The style of play is something that we need to change, and I’ve made it clear,” Ujiri said, referencing the early post-season talks with Casey. “And coach has acknowledged it and he’s already thought about it. Just some of the things that we do, it’s not working anymore.

“And I’ve just made it clear that it’s going to be difficult to me for keep changing players, just because of the way the (Collective Bargaining Agreement) is.”

The loss to Cleveland, though — not so much the loss itself but the way they lost — has lit a fuse under Ujiri like no other defeat.

Ujiri said he saw too many wide-eyed Raptors in that Cleveland series and we assume he’s not just talking about the rookies. He either didn’t want to share or hasn’t quite figured it out, but Ujiri knows he can’t stand by and do nothing new.

And don’t get him started on that 'LeBron is great and we don’t have a superstar so we can’t compete' crap.

“Does that mean we should go hide under a table and say we are not going to compete?” Ujiri asked, clearly irked by the question.

“I am just not one of those guys (who just gives up). We are here to compete with them and find ways to compete with them. Yeah, it is easy to say but it’s the same question we asked in the beginning four years ago. I am not saying this is what we have done, but at least we tried to compete and tried to go out there and compete with the big boys and be there instead of just making the playoffs.

“We have to find a way. To me, those are all excuses. We have to find a way to find those players or develop our own into being winners on a high level.”

In short, change is coming.

How much change will be determined by, in no particular order:

whether Lowry wants to return

whether Ujiri feels Casey can adapt to a different style

whether the trio of unrestricted free agents (Serge Ibaka, P.J. Tucker and Patrick Patterson) return

One thing is for sure: Ujiri will not be lacking is options.

He confirmed he has 100% backing of ownership to spend into the luxury tax and bring everyone back. Ujiri said he personally would have no hesitation in taking a step back if that were deemed the best course of action by he and his management team.

As Ujiri correctly pointed out in his opening remarks, Tuesday's media briefing would probably have been much more effective were it held a month from now.

UJIRI STILL AN IBAKA FAN

Three Raptors, two who are under contract and one who is an unrestricted free agent, were addressed specifically by Raptors president Masai Ujiri in his post-season address on Tuesday.

His thinking on Serge Ibaka has not changed since acquiring him at the trade deadline.

“Is he a player that’s gone from being more of a (No. 4 guy on the floor) to a 5? Maybe,” Ujiri conceded. “But, other than that, it’s one of things we talked about with coach. How do we play, like, how do you change some of those long 2s to 3s? And figure out ways to put our players in other positions and the style in which we play. And so with Serge, no, nothing has changed.”

Ujiri called DeMarre Carroll’s year “a healing season.” He expects Carroll to come back after a pivotal off-season looking much more like the Carroll they expected when they signed him as a free agent from Atlanta in 2015.

Ujiri has also not given up on Jonas Valanciunas, despite the direction the league is headed, with big men now stretching out all the way to the three-point line.

“There are many positives that came out of the playoffs, too, with Jonas,” Ujiri said. “Does he play more in the dunker (role), rather than post ups or face ups? That’s why I say we have to have a reset. We have to have a reset here.

“We’re really going to emphasize that with the way he plays and then maybe we make a judgment there. We’re excited about the young bigs we have, too, and all of them have to figure that out. It’s something we are going to emphasize as we go forward.”

mganter@postmedia.com