For a team that won a franchise-record 59 games this season, Casey is one of the finalists for the NBA Coach of the Year.
After getting swept in the second round by the fourth-seeded Cleveland Cavaliers, he is also unemployed.
Casey went 320-238 (.573) in seven seasons in Toronto, which included four Atlantic Division titles in the last five years, and three straight 50-win seasons. With the Raptors being swept by the Cavaliers in the second round in back-to-back years, and a third straight playoff loss in Cleveland’s championship season of 2016, Toronto brass decided it was Casey who should fall on the sword--no Cavalier pun intended.
Toronto’s dynamic tandem of Kyle Lowry and DeMar Derozan both rolled over and died in Game Four, and Lowry only scored 13 combined points in the two games in Cleveland last week. Casey’s Raptors could not hold a lead in Game One, and lost 113-112 in overtime. LeBron James hit yet another game-winning buzzer beater in Game Three, after it was the Cavaliers who choked away a big lead late.
Derozan got himself ejected late in the third quarter of the Cavalier-clinching game, with the Raptors down 27 points. At that point, Casey knew he was likely going to be sending resumes while on the plane back to Toronto.
However, you cannot put much of the blame on Casey for the Raptors bowing out the way they did. Any team that has LeBron James is going to be favored in the Eastern Conference, and can never be counted out in the NBA Finals.
Casey’s pickings for his next job are slim, after Charlotte named San Antonio assistant James Borrego their head coach this morning. The New York Knicks (David Fizdale) and Phoenix Suns (Igor Kokoskov) already filled their vacancies since the end of the regular season. The only current openings are in Atlanta, Detroit, and Orlando. Detroit still has the rights to Blake Griffin until the end of the 2021-22 season, but the pickings with the Hawks and Magic are slim at best. Do you really think Casey would slide into a Piston organization that has to see LeBron four times during the regular season, and is poised to make a return to the playoffs next year?
The 2018-19 season is likely going to see Toronto come back down to earth, regardless of who takes over behind the bench. Assuming LeBron stays in Cleveland, you have to consider the Cavaliers the favorites in the East. Boston will be getting Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward back healthy next season. Philadelphia could take that next step after pushing the Celtics to seven games earlier this week.
If Toronto is looking for an outside-the-box method for next season, there is talk that another Gregg Popovich assistant should get a serious interview. That would be none other than Becky Hammon. Milwaukee interviewed Hammon for their available General Manager position after last season, ultimately deciding on Jon Horst. Hammon has worked under Popovich since 2014, and has head coaching experience, leading the Spurs to the 2015 NBA Summer League championship. Granted, the talent level for rookies and retreads is not nearly on par as All Stars Lowry and Derozan, but Hammon was a six-time WNBA All Star, a top-15 All-Time player, and has excelled as an assistant under the best head coach of the current NBA generation.
The way the Spurs found a way to make the playoffs with Kawhi Leonard being a head-case late in the season should allow her to keep Derozan and Lowry under raps fairly well.
Then again, all this could have been negated if Raptor management bothered to realize just how good a head coach they had. Instead, team president Masai Ujiri decided Toronto could be the first team in NBA history to fire a head coach in the same season that he won Coach of the Year.
-JC24