CASEY’S MUCH-DESERVED SALUTE
Former Raptors head coach feted during Pistons’ last-second victory over Toronto
There was a high school dance kind of awkwardness to almost everything around Dwane Casey’s return to what is now called the Scotiabank Arena.
President Masai Ujiri looked like he’d rather be a hundred other places Wednesday night. Casey had that big forced smile on his face in his pre-game media scrum that appeared to be part nerves, part excitement, part get me thee ff out of here.
And Nick Nurse, he is more the best supporting actor nominee in this basketball drama, which ended Wednesday in a 106-104 Pistons victory. He may have been party to the firing of Casey and certainly was party to his own hiring as coach of the Raptors, but when he was announced in all the pre-game noise as coach of the Toronto team, if there was applause, you couldn’t hear it.
And then the odd scene on the court, when the Detroit Pistons called timeout for the very first time in the first quarter and the game night operators put the two-minute tribute video on the board to celebrate all Casey accomplished in his time coaching the Raptors. There were the owners of the team, George Cope of Bell and chairman Larry Tanenbaum, standing, smiling and enthusiastically applauding.
When was the last time you saw owners giving a raucous standing ovation to a coach they had to approve the firing of just months ago?
If I’ve seen anything like this before on a sporting night, I can’t remember it.
The video, not surprisingly, was well done. It had various views of Casey, numerous highlights and words and graphics outlining his many accomplishments here and with it came applause from the Scotiabank crowd getting louder and louder and more enthusiastic as it ended with a thank you.
And odd or maybe it’s just Kyle Lowry being an individual; Lowry left the Raptors bench during the timeout with Nurse apparently giving instructions and not turning to watch the video of the man who brought him to the NBA.
But Lowry had to say something about the coach who helped turn him from NBA annoyance to all-star. Lowry walked to near centre court, watched the video, stood there and applauded. No one was going to take that from him.
There aren’t many nights like this one on any team’s schedule. A beloved coach returning. Coaching against the best Raptors team we’ve seen. With the former assistant coach now in charge. And with Casey saying he has accepted his firing, but he still doesn’t understand it.
The truth: he knows he and Ujiri had gone about as far down the road as they could have as working general manager and coach, even if Ujiri has another title. He knows there’s a point in time when you can’t work together any more, can’t trust each other, don’t believe in each other. That’s what happened with Ujiri and Casey.
Essentially they fired each other with only one of them able to make the decision.
It was definitive, but it also meant for an uneasy and uncomfortable goodbye.
But here we are, with the Raptors 15 games into a new season, with 12 wins and three losses for Nurse the first-year coach, and after all the drama, the angst, the reality, the anxiety, the attempts at defining and explaining who did what to whom, there is a surprising win-win in all of this.
Ujiri has the team he wants with Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green, at least for this season and who knows how much longer.
Nurse has his first head coaching job in the NBA. It only took forever to get here. casey provided him with the opportunity to get in the league and when Casey could have used some support from Nurse after the horrible sweep by the Cleveland Cavaliers last May, his friend wasn’t there. That doesn’t mean as much today as his 12-3 record.
First-time coaching. Superb
There aren’t many nights like this one on any team’s schedule. A beloved coach returning. Coaching against the best Raptors team we’ve seen.
record. It’s all working out for Nurse in the early going and never mind the fans barely acknowledged him on Wednesday night.
And yes, after going through the indignity of winning coach of the year and getting fired after a record season, and wondering about misplaced personal loyalties, it has worked out well for Casey. He is coaching the Detroit Pistons, a franchise with a few stars and a roster in need of building. He is surrounded by the kind of basketball people he had hoped to be surrounded by in Toronto.
And he’s getting serious money, five years, somewhere around US$40 million. Life-changing money for a guy who never made a lot over the years. Now his kids and his kids’ kids will be taken care of forever.
So Ujiri wins. And Nurse wins. And Casey wins on a night when his Pistons won in the last second.
Happily ever after. For now. For everybody involved.