The question left hanging over Dwane Casey’s future with the Toronto Raptors was apparently never as big in Masai Ujiri’s mind as it might have been in minds elsewhere.
But it loomed large in a lot of places. The NBA grapevine has been buzzing with regard to Casey’s future. When a team stumbles to the finish like Toronto did and then gets blown away in the playoffs against a lower seed, everything is under consideration.
Ujiri said as much in his season-ending press conference two weeks ago. But he also made the point that “If this [firing Casey] was something that was in our head, I think I’d be coming out today and saying, ‘You know what, Coach Casey is not going to be our coach.’”
Well, for those who were wondering, Ujiri is not going to fire Casey, who is under contract for next season with a team option for 2016-17. And – following his own logic – if he’s not going to fire Casey, there’s no need to make a formal announcement saying that nothing’s changed. No news was good news, if you’re Casey.
But Ujiri’s silence on the topic has raised some eyebrows. In both his season-ending post-mortem and in radio interviews last week he didn’t take the opportunity to make a clear endorsement of his head coach.
Maybe he didn’t feel it necessary – the two men have been working together since the season ended discussing matters with both long and short-term implications. It’s been business as usual.
But even the smallest degree of confusion in these matters can snowball at times – the NBA being a small, gossipy village. Even suggesting Casey was being evaluated raised eyebrows.
Regardless, all indications from league sources are that Casey will return for his fifth season on the Raptors bench where – if things go even reasonably well – he should set franchise marks for games won and games coached. He’s two behind Sam Mitchell for the all-time leader in wins and his .488 winning percentage is the best in team history. His winning percentage has increased every season, peaking with their team record 49 wins this past year.
It’s likely that there will be coaching changes, though not a purge. It’s typical that coaches and organizations tweak their staffs from one season to the next and there’s plenty of reason to expect the Raptors will shuffle theirs.
They slipped from 10th in the NBA in defensive rating in 2013-14 to 25th in the season just completed and their problems protecting their own basket only got worse as the season went along. There were exacerbating circumstances – injuries to DeMar DeRozan; Kyle Lowry’s surprising fade – but coaching has to be part of the mix.
And while offensively the Raptors could point to some gaudy numbers – they finished the season as the fourth-rated offence – their heavy reliance on isolation plays for Lowry, DeRozan and Lou Williams became glaring against the Wizards.
So expect Casey and the Raptors to be in the market for some senior assistants who can help the club become sounder defensively and more egalitarian offensively.
But in keeping Casey, Ujiri is putting some pressure on himself. If coaching wasn’t the issue in the Raptors’ second-half slide, then focus shifts to the roster, which is Ujiri’s department. He’s consistently taken a slow-and-steady approach – he didn’t make a move at the trade deadline and used the 20th pick of the draft last year on long-term project Bruno Caboclo – but there are holes that even John Wooden would struggle patch over.
The debacle against the Wizards may have helped Casey’s cause, in some ways. It was difficult for anyone to look at the lineup Washington put on the floor and conclude that the Wizards didn’t have more talent. John Wall and Bradley Beal were the superior backcourt, even if that was supposed to be the Raptors’ strength. The combination of Nene and Marcin Gortat were more imposing and polished than Jonas Valanciunas and any combination of Tyler Hansbrough and Amir Johnson. Otto Porter emerged as a potentially elite performer at age 21 while Terrence Ross appears to have plateaued as he heads into a pivotal fourth season.
And the Wizards had Paul Pierce, for whom the Raptors had no answer.
As they stand, the Raptors exist in a strange kind of Eastern Conference limbo where a chasm separates them from the Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, Atlanta Hawks and – it would seem – the Wizards and below them are a collection of franchises that have been acquiring elite talent at a rapid rate and are poised to rise.
Figuring out how to gain ground on the pack ahead while keeping those below at bay will be Ujiri’s task this summer. He’ll have his hands full, although it appears that finding a new coach is not on his agenda.