Kevin O'Neill will be making his last appearance at the Air Canada Centre tonight as head coach of the Raptors.

Sources close to the team and the coach say final arrangements are being made for the sides to negotiate a buyout of the final year of O'Neill's contract.

The move is expected to be finalized Thursday, when interim general manager Jack McCloskey is due in town.

O'Neill's departure after just one season as an NBA head coach will pave the way the way for a new general manager to have a clean slate to operate from whenever the team gets around to hiring someone to replace Glen Grunwald.

It's expected O'Neill's assistant coaches ? Tony Brown, Jim Sann, Bob Beyer and Ron Oliver ? will be let go.

Jay Triano will be retained at least until a new GM is put in place.

O'Neill, who signed a two-year contract worth about $3.5 million (all figures U.S.) last June, would not confirm the speculation yesterday.

"We have two games left to play and I'm going to approach those two games as I would any other two games," he said.

"We'll deal with the other stuff at the end of the year."