Club president Bryan Colangelo says the buck stops with him as the team tries to end a five-game losing streak in which they’ve dipped to 11th in the standings.

“At the end of the day, there’s a lot of talk about this being about coaching and systems and things like that,” said Colangelo, who was en route yesterday to meet his team in Washington for tonight’s game against the Wizards. “But at the end of the day if you’re looking for someone to blame, you can point to me because I’m ultimately the one responsible for putting this group together.”

So far, the pieces don’t seem to fit, though the good news is with only five teams with winning records in the East, they haven’t backed themselves into a corner yet.

Where they seem so out of place is on the defensive end. By some measures the Raptors are on pace to be one of the worst defensive teams in NBA history, at least based on how poor their defence is compared to the league averaged.

But Colangelo said he’s not planning any significant changes after a summer when he wowed the NBA with a flurry of trades and signings that brought the likes of Hedo Turkoglu and Jack here on long-term deals and included an extension for Andrea Bargnani if not Chris Bosh, who will be a free agent next summer.

“This team has far too much talent to cast off or give up on. I have no doubt these guys can play, but talk is cheap.”

And he didn’t sound like a coaching change was imminent, even though executives in New Orleans and New Jersey have stepped down from the front office to coach teams they’ve assembled but which have under achieved, a move his mentor and father, Jerry Colangelo undertook twice in his career running the Phoenix Suns.

“We can change the system and tweak it all we want, but it still comes down to execution and effort by the players,” Colangelo said. “It’s been very disappointing.”