Woj: Casey will be back

[Nilanka]

I'd agree completely if not for the fact that this exact scenario went down last season with the Leafs.

It can't be a coincidence.

The Leafs can be explained by Nonis simply being a dumbass.

[JimiCliff]

Geez TRex, where were you 6-8 pages ago? I had no backup at all.

No point in changing a coach when the team is flawed. We need better players.

That's like saying, 'The alternator's busted...but the tires are all flat too…screw it, let's just fix the tires."

[Nilanka]

I don't know if I can recall a Playoff series that the Raptors have been more ill-prepared for.

— Tim Chisholm (@timpchisholm) April 22, 2015

This is on Casey just as much, if not more so, as the players.

[Bendit]

We're tanking. Pure and simple. MU waiting till next summer to make big moves. As a SSH I will be extremely dissatisfied as clearly next year will be a wasted year where we take a step back.

And with our effing luck, the league will decide on tanking rules for the draft and change the %s for the lottery positions!!

[psrs1]

MLSE can be criticized for a lot of things but, even back in the bad old Teachers days, ownership has never been cheap when it comes to firing guys and paying out salaries. I don't buy into the narrative that this is a MLSE decision at all. Ujiri wants Casey back, so, Casey is back. If Ujiri wanted him gone he'd find a way.

I agree re MLSE. MU deserves more criticism.

[McRealistic]

MLSE can be criticized for a lot of things but, even back in the bad old Teachers days, ownership has never been cheap when it comes to firing guys and paying out salaries. I don't buy into the narrative that this is a MLSE decision at all. Ujiri wants Casey back, so, Casey is back. If Ujiri wanted him gone he'd find a way.

Nicely Said.

People need to stop finding excuses for this guy and except that he may not be the Golden boy they thought he is.

This is the summer of MU and he has a lot of work to do. His first step was terrible.

[MixxAOR]

Nicely Said.

People need to stop finding excuses for this guy and except that he may not be the Golden boy they thought he is.

This is the summer of MU and he has a lot of work to do. His first step was terrible.

yeah people say Ujiri couldn't get rid off Casey last season because we made playoffs and all that but Pelicans had no problem getting rid off Monty Williams.

[Primer]

yeah people say Ujiri couldn't get rid off Casey last season because we made playoffs and all that but Pelicans had no problem getting rid off Monty Williams.

At least last year we played amazing basketball post Rudy gay trade, and took our playoff series to 7 games. This year there was no excuse other than, hey guys, one more regular season win, don't pay attention to our post all star break collapse or the super embarrassing first round ass whooping. I really want Masai to do another interview and explain what the fuck he's doing.

[The_Warlord]

Trying to have some faith in this team and their upper management/ownership.. I believe they are smart enough to instil a program not a year over year quick fix Colangelo-esque philosophy to try to hit home runs to win now.

My theory is Casey is a company man following directives given to him by his GM and their analytical staff. There is organizational buy-in for the offensive/defensive and player development strategies the team employs. You can't fire a guy for following orders.. This can be proven true by acquiring/drafting players that fit the mould of the strategies used.

The stubbornness has to do with instilling these values into T Ross, JV and to a lesser extent DD, Lowry and 2Pat and seeing if they sink or swim. Masai knows what he has.

Instead of tanking Masai is going after home run draft picks. Not a terrible strategy either considering there usually are a few hits per draft class after the lottery.

[consmap]

Well, if Casey is indeed being retained I'll just look forward to player changes from now on. Something has to happen.

Hopefully something exciting happens on draft night too.

[Just Is]

The Leafs can be explained by Nonis simply being a dumbass.

If it only happened there, I'd buy it.

It happening for two teams owned by the same management team within (possibly) the same season? That's not a coincidence. Either way, Masai has now been married to whatever Casey brings. And we know what (very little at BEST) Casey brings. Even if he's fired early on, it doesn't speak well to him. This really screams that next season is going to be a wasted one.

Granted, I do find it incredibly suspicious that this news gets out on the exact same day the New Orleans fires their coach...

[Chr1s1anL]

Trying to have some faith in this team and their upper management/ownership.. I believe they are smart enough to instil a program not a year over year quick fix Colangelo-esque philosophy to try to hit home runs to win now.

My theory is Casey is a company man following directives given to him by his GM and their analytical staff. There is organizational buy-in for the offensive/defensive and player development strategies the team employs. You can't fire a guy for following orders.. This can be proven true by acquiring/drafting players that fit the mould of the strategies used.

The stubbornness has to do with instilling these values into T Ross, JV and to a lesser extent DD, Lowry and 2Pat and seeing if they sink or swim. Masai knows what he has.

Instead of tanking Masai is going after home run draft picks. Not a terrible strategy either considering there usually are a few hits per draft class after the lottery.

Wow never thought of it like that. Well put.

[magoon]

I said it before and will say it again.

There are three basic theories as to what went wrong this year:

1.) Casey brutally mismanaged the team.
2.) The team stopped listening to Casey and did their own thing.
3.) Both 1 and 2.

Now, a lot of people here subscribe to theory 1. That's fine. None of us know for sure what happened and everybody can theorize. But the thing is that, with less overall talent and less time to create plays for that talent, Casey arguably did better in 2013-14 than he did in 2014-15.

Coaches can be bad but they don't magically get worse. Casey did not forget how to coach in 2014/15 the way he coached in the previous season - where he created a reasonably good defense and rudimentary but effective offense.

What this means is that theory 1 is probably the least likely of the three theories. #2 and 3 are more likely - which means you either believe it was the players' fault, or a combination of Casey and the players. And come on: we'd been hearing for months before the playoffs that the Raptors seemed to genuinely believe they were a great team and doing the right things even as their record collapsed into mediocrity. They were led by Kyle Lowry, a talented player with a history of not listening to coaches whenever he gets pissy, and it's not unreasonable to believe that his attitude trickled down to the rest of the team. It's very unlikely that the players weren't involved in the decline.

So, here's the thing. If you choose option 2 - it's just the players' fault - then the clear route is "clean house on the roster as much as you deem necessary and keep Casey." But if you choose option 3 - it's on both the players and the coach - then the proper thing to do, although it may be counterintuitive, is to both clean house on the roster and not fire the coach.

Because it's possible that Casey will have more success with a new group of players. It's also possible that he won't. But if you're starting with a mostly-fresh group of players in 2015/16, unless you think Casey is a blithering incompetent - and he's had too much success as a coach for anybody to reasonably conclude that, to be honest - from a cost/benefit analysis it's simply good math to let him have at least one or two months with the new team to see if they click. If they don't, then you fire him.

[S.R.]

I said it before and will say it again.

There are three basic theories as to what went wrong this year:

1.) Casey brutally mismanaged the team.
2.) The team stopped listening to Casey and did their own thing.
3.) Both 1 and 2.

Now, a lot of people here subscribe to theory 1. That's fine. None of us know for sure what happened and everybody can theorize. But the thing is that, with less overall talent and less time to create plays for that talent, Casey arguably did better in 2013-14 than he did in 2014-15.

Coaches can be bad but they don't magically get worse. Casey did not forget how to coach in 2014/15 the way he coached in the previous season - where he created a reasonably good defense and rudimentary but effective offense.

What this means is that theory 1 is probably the least likely of the three theories. #2 and 3 are more likely - which means you either believe it was the players' fault, or a combination of Casey and the players. And come on: we'd been hearing for months before the playoffs that the Raptors seemed to genuinely believe they were a great team and doing the right things even as their record collapsed into mediocrity. They were led by Kyle Lowry, a talented player with a history of not listening to coaches whenever he gets pissy, and it's not unreasonable to believe that his attitude trickled down to the rest of the team. It's very unlikely that the players weren't involved in the decline.

So, here's the thing. If you choose option 2 - it's just the players' fault - then the clear route is "clean house on the roster as much as you deem necessary and keep Casey." But if you choose option 3 - it's on both the players and the coach - then the proper thing to do, although it may be counterintuitive, is to both clean house on the roster and not fire the coach.

Because it's possible that Casey will have more success with a new group of players. It's also possible that he won't. But if you're starting with a mostly-fresh group of players in 2015/16, unless you think Casey is a blithering incompetent - and he's had too much success as a coach for anybody to reasonably conclude that, to be honest - from a cost/benefit analysis it's simply good math to let him have at least one or two months with the new team to see if they click. If they don't, then you fire him.

You're forgetting a critical dynamic: adjustments. The Raptors got found out. Teams learned how to abuse Casey's scramble defense and the hard hedges the bigs were asked to do out at the perimeter. They learned how to play the Raptors' highest scoring players - play them tight and force them into difficult jump shots because they'll take them and they won't pass the ball. FFS the Warriors basically wrote "DeRozan won't pass" on their whiteboard.

The players dug in their heels and the guards shot more and passed less as things got worse. That's on them. It's also all on Casey, who did absolutely nothing to adjust to the adjustments. Re: the offense "those are shots we usually make" - that culminated in a first round beat down and a Wizards team that held the Raps' vaunted offence well below their season averages. And Casey also refused to adapt his defensive schemes to adjust to opponents' adjustments when it was obvious his guards and bigs were all getting abused. That culminated in a first round beat down and a Wizards team without a very good offense scoring well, well above their season average.

The coach is not about to get a pass because the roster needs improvement or because there were likely locker room issues. Several things need to be fixed here, and Casey is one of them.

[ebrian]

Tank is the one situation where Casey makes sense.

My other theory is that Masai has his next coach on staff already as an assistant, but MLSE doesn't want to pay 2 coaches, so we start the season with Casey, and when he inevitably still sucks, we fire him and promote the assistant to head coach while simply paying him the assistant coach salary we already were paying him.

Maybe we get new players and Casey all of a sudden becomes a good coach, but I've said that 3 years in a row and it never happens, he still sucks.

This crossed my mind as well. The next guy might be one of the assistants this year.