Calm, cool and collected Casey is what Raps need
Michael Jordan, the all-time great NBAer, recently revealed a nickname he occasionally uses on Tiger Woods, the once-transcendent golfer.
“Rabbit Ears,” is what Jordan sometimes calls Woods.
It’s not a comment on Woods’s physical appearance. It fits because, as ESPN’s Wright Thompson explained in a profile of Woods, “he hears everything.” His perceived critics, his naysayers, everything written and said about his descent to world No. 499 — he takes in all of it.
Jordan, as a friend and mentor, clearly sees it as counterproductive. But anyone who’s been paying attention to the Raptors in the post-season knows Woods isn’t alone in being hooked on the habit. Lately, Toronto coach Dwane Casey has counted himself as one of those selfGoogling types seemingly obsessed with the way he’s perceived by the outside world. Raptor fans don’t need Air Jordan to tell them it’s not an optimal pastime for the man running your bench.
Witness how Casey reacted in the biggest moment of his head coaching career. Instead of basking in the rare glow of Sunday’s Game 7 win over Indiana, Casey oddly began his post-victory press conference by pointing fingers at those who, in the coach’s mind, “wrote the Raptors off and gave us up for dead.”
“First of all, I want to see everybody’s story that they wrote before the game,” Casey said, addressing the assembled media. “Back in Kentucky . . . when that bear’s laying there, you want to poke it, you better make sure he’s dead.”
Now, let’s make a thing or two clear. I’m a big believer Casey is the best all-round coach in Raptors history. I’m also of the opinion he desperately needs to relax. It’s often said teams take their personalities from their coaches. So it’s no wonder the Raptors’ first-round makeup was, in a word, tense. For much of the series, Casey was a human ball of hepped-up stress. It’s not a huge leap to suggest Casey’s palpable angst rubbed off on a squad that looked tight from the opening throes of Game 1 to a fourthquarter near-choke in Game 7.
And somehow Casey put the blame on the doubters.
“I think everybody wrote the Raptors off and gave us up for dead,” Casey insisted after Game 7.
That was an absurd idea, not to mention an insult to a fan-base that has done nothing but believe in a franchise that, for much of its 21season existence, has consistently delivered dud after dud. Even given that, the usual adoring thousands packed the arena and the surrounding square on Sunday. Everybody in attendance and watching on TV could see that the Raptors clearly were the better team, the deeper one, more accomplished squad. They were a No. 2 seed playing an under-manned No. 7. Favoured by six points in Las Vegas in the decisive game of the series, they needed to perform almost incomprehensibly poorly to lose. That they nearly did, and that they didn’t cover the spread — heck, even those minor details didn’t seem to matter much to anybody celebrating in the buzz of Jurassic Park. The Dinos got it done. History won’t ask how.
And yet Casey chose to use the moment to hunt his perceived critics. That’s certainly his right. But what, precisely, was his point? Casey justified it all as an “us-against-the-haters” plotline that his team took to heart. But that just didn’t hold water. Casey’s players certainly didn’t make prominent post-game mention of such inspiration. And observers who’ve known Casey for years acknowledged his lashing out at reporters qualified as curiously out of character.
Maybe you could understand why Casey was edgy after his Game 1 loss, when he led off a press briefing by dismissing as “asinine” a critical column that appeared in this space. Casey was very much coaching for his job at that point. A while back there was a well-reasoned theory floated by insiders that Toronto GM Masai Ujiri had a very specific reason for making the peculiar decision to suggest that the outcome of Toronto’s playoff run wouldn’t affect Casey’s contract status. (“He deserves to be our coach in the future,” is what Ujiri said). Ujiri, the theory goes, felt he needed to reduce Casey’s stress level by any means necessary — even if it might have required him to go back on his sentiment in the event of a first-round flameout.
The GM was apparently willing to take that risk because he, too, has observed the inverse relationship between Casey’s apparent blood pressure and the team’s performance standard.
All that said, maybe Tuesday’s second-round opener against the
“Case is always going to be himself. He’s always fiery, he always wants us to be into it.” RAPTORS’ KYLE LOWRY ON COACH DWANE CASEY
Miami Heat will be a freeing experience for a coach and a team that’s looked tied in knots in three previous Game 1 losses. Ujiri gave Casey a now-famous kiss on the head after the Game 7 win. And now that a contract extension seems a given, maybe Casey will emanate a new ease to accompany his job security. Just in case, Ujiri ought to have performance bonuses written into the coach’s deal for regular yoga-class attendance.
“Case is always going to be himself,” Raptors all-star Kyle Lowry said on Monday. “He’s always fiery, he always wants us to be into it.”
Casey will be tested in this second round — and not just on his peerless grasp of the names and writing styles of members of the playoff media contingent. Miami’s coaching staff, headed by Eric Spoelstra, is championship-hardened and vastly experienced. Spoelstra, age 45, owns 67 playoff wins. Casey, 59, seven.
Casey’s staff needs to address the problems of scheme that continue to hold back the Raptors. They’re playing too much selfish basketball, compiling the second-lowest assists-per-game rate in the playoffs so far. At their worst in the first round, they also played dismally stagnant basketball, holding the ball an average of about 21 seconds per possession — the second-most lethargic attack in the playoffs next to the kings of stand-around offence in Cleveland, this when Casey keeps preaching the value of less ponderous play.
Those are problems that need to be solved with rational thought and judgment, problems that may be dissected in print and on screen. Casey, of course, is free to read and say whatever he likes. But getting the rabbit ears perked up, getting all riled up — it’d be nothing but counterproductive for a coach and a team better off calming down.