Kevin O'Neill must have toned down his exuberance a little bit: Glen Grunwald never once opened his door during his Raptors coaching search to find someone standing there in a gorilla suit.

The gorilla-suit story ? O'Neill was a college assistant trying to woo a prospective player and figured that was the best way to get the recruit's attention ? is just one of the many tales about the soon-to-be-new Raptors coach.

O'Neill, who is likely to be introduced as the team's fifth head coach some time late this week, according to league and team sources, is known as a study in contrasts, a basketball coach driven to succeed, a man of high integrity who works hard, plays hard and is more than willing to let his players know exactly how he feels.

His favourite words will never turn up in the pages of a newspaper or on nightly newsclips because they are, um, salty, to say the least.

But O'Neill tempers his habit of making points in the harshest manner with nearly daily attendance at church.