On a day when the Toronto Raptors lost a veteran player, they picked up six coaches.

Injured reserve centre Eric Montross announced his retirement from the National Basketball Association yesterday while the Raptors announced the hiring of six new members of rookie head coach Kevin O'Neill's staff.

And while O'Neill seemed pleased to have his coaching contingent -- which will include Canadian national team coach Jay Triano, the lone holdover from Lenny Wilkens's crew -- in place, he also voiced regret that he would not be able to coach the big North Carolina graduate.

"I knew him just in passing before I got here," O'Neill said. "There's no more first-class guy than Eric Montross. It's too bad he can't play, because I think he could really help our team. Nobody tried harder to keep playing than he did, I think he exhausted all avenues to come back, and in the end made a good career decision."

That decision came after an innocent-seeming injury to the middle part of his foot that left bone fragments in an area that can't easily or effectively be treated.

Montross suffered the injury near the end of the 2001-2002 season. He's had nine specialist examine the foot and eventually concluded his playing days were over after eight seasons with six teams, the last two in Toronto.

"It was a relatively innocuous situation," said Montross, a seven-foot, 270-pound defensive specialist. "It was just a step, not a misstep, not a fall, not a twist. What has been told to me is that the wear and tear of playing basketball as long as I have, this just happened to be the straw that broke the camel's back."