National Post (National Edition)
Casey had reason to embrace Raps’ title
Former coach’s fingerprints were all over championship
Dwane Casey wasn’t around for the champagne celebration in Oakland last season, but his influence with the Toronto Raptors was there in so many ways.
No coach in the history of the NBA franchise has more wins behind the Raptors’ bench than Casey.
Over seven seasons he took this team from the depths of a 22-win season to a franchise best 59 wins in his seventh and final year.
His eventual undoing — and he’s not alone in this camp — was his inability to get past LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the playoffs.
Following a third-straight loss to the Cavs in the 2017-18 Eastern Conference semifinals, this one a four-game sweep, neither those 59 regular season wins nor an impending Coach of the Year award could save Casey’s job.
That his departure from Toronto coincided with James’ departure from Cleveland was a cruel coincidence.
While he did not enjoy the champagne shower or add a second NBA Finals ring to his personal collection, Casey publicly took great pride in the Raptors’ 2019 title.
“Everybody thought I would be, ‘Woe is me.’ But I looked at it the other way,” Casey said in an interview with Michael Lee of The Athletic. “What it did, it reinforced what I was doing. And that group took it over the hump and finished it.
“... I was happy for the players, for the country and the team. It really energized me, that what we were doing was right. I took that with it, more than jealousy.”
And how could it not?
Casey was the man behind the bench when this thing finally started heading in the right direction.
He arrived in Toronto in 2011 fresh off another championship in which he played a big role, though that one he has the jewelry from to prove it. Casey was one of Rick Carlisle’s lead assistants on that Dallas Mavericks team that won a title, earning Casey plenty of praise for his handling of the defence, and an opportunity north of the border.
So it was not a surprise at all when he arrived in Toronto in that summer of 2011 that he immediately went to work on the Raptors’ porous defence.
The team only improved by a win over the previous year in a lockout-shortened season, but the team attitude toward defence changed dramatically.
In one year the Raptors went from the worst defensive rating in the entire league (112.9 points allowed per 100 possessions) to 14th in the NBA as Casey’s demand for defence chopped a full 8½ points per 100 possessions off their disappointing mark of a year earlier, and that dedication to defence remained front and centre throughout his tenure.
Casey’s teams weren’t just more defensively responsible. They year by year grew to be a team others hated to face because of the physical nature of that defence.
That, too, would be a hallmark of Casey teams going forward, and beyond his departure. They would beat you on the scoreboard and in the alley as well, if need be.
Over seven years on the job in Toronto, Casey’s bottom line improved in every season but one. He went from a 23-win team in his first year to a franchise best 59win team in his final year behind Toronto’s bench.
The lone year the win total didn’t improve from the year before was when his Raptors won 51 games in 2016-17, down from 56 the season before, and followed that up with the franchise best 59win season in his final year.
Like Bryan Colangelo, the man who brought him to Toronto, Casey wasn’t around for the ultimate celebration last summer but you couldn’t miss his fingerprints all over that championship roster.
WARMING UP TO KYLE
Kyle Lowry was not Dwane Casey’s choice to lead his team when he arrived.
The two clashed rather openly in the early days as Casey preferred the player he knew better in Jose Calderon.
A former point guard himself, Casey knows exactly how important the position is within the framework of a team and initially at least Calderon was a better fit for the job.
“(Our relationship) changed a lot,” Lowry told reporters upon Casey’s first return to Toronto as the head coach of the Detroit Pistons. “It went from a guy who kind of wasn’t trusting in what I did, and me not trusting in what he wanted, and kind of us battling back and forth, to him being like ‘Hey listen, I believe in what you can do, you show me what you can do,’ and me saying ‘All right if you show me that and I’ve showed you what I can do, I’ll listen to you more and we’ll have a good relationship.’”
As convoluted as that sounds, it worked for both men.
Midway through his first year Lowry was starting in front of Calderon to the point that the latter was dealt away that January and Lowry has been the unchallenged starting point guard ever since.
WHAT IT DID, IT REINFORCED WHAT I WAS DOING.