The pleasure was ours
Dear Coach Dwane Casey: And thank you. Thank you for your seven terrific years of service as coach of the Toronto Raptors.
Thank you for the way you and your “all-American” family immersed yourselves in our city and how you represented us around the NBA.
And thank you for the extraordinarily moving and classy letter you sent Toronto last week on taking your leave.
If you don’t mind, we’ll continue to call you Coach because that’s what you were — in more ways than merely on the court. And that’s what you will doubtless be again.
We won’t sugar-coat it. That bruising playoff sweep at the hands of the Cleveland Cavaliers was painful. But most basketball fans think the outcome was all about the phenomenon that is LeBron James, not about you.
Anyway, we’re sure you’ll draw something positive from the sad ending. Just as you’ve drawn lessons from challenges all your life. We won’t soon forget what you taught us. How you attended segregated grade schools in Kentucky, received second-hand textbooks that had been inscribed with racial slurs by their previous owners.
How you fought “every other day” once those schools were integrated because other kids — likely as not goaded by parents who didn’t know better — called you “the n-word” and how you “just had too much pride” to take it.
How you were only the fifth African-American to play for the University of Kentucky and how you ended up captaining the team and winning an NCAA championship.
How you worked in coal mines and on tobacco farms to put yourself through school.
That kind of experience shapes a man. Hard times often produce good, resilient people wise in both the best and worst of human nature, and bent on exemplifying and developing the former.
We thank you for that example, for the thrills, for the memories.
We’re delighted that you, your wife, Brenda, and your children, Justine and Zachary, felt at home in Toronto. The door is always open. We’ll leave a light on. Farewell, Toronto
We thank you for that example, for the thrills, for the memories