Dwane Casey Rumors
Rod Beard: #Pistons Stefanski on Dwane Casey: They’ve been really positive with Casey. He’s a very good coach but an even better person. “He’ll kick them in the butt when they need it and give them encouragement when they need it.”
“Did it surprise me when they let Case go? Hell yeah, it did, especially the way it played out,” says Nurse, who is full of praise for how his predecessor lifted Toronto from an Eastern Conference also-ran to an Eastern Conference power over seven seasons. “There was one press conference and then the next conference, and then a day went by and you kind of thought the storm was over and you’re going to keep going along, so it did catch you off guard.”
Keith Langlois: You didn’t have a lot to work with in free agency, yet you wound up satisfying some critical needs. Glenn Robinson, it looks like, will be in the rotation at minimum and the two veterans, Jose Calderon and Zaza, are the kind of guys who find ways to help even if they’re not playing. How critical was it for you to add those two for what they might mean for leadership and presence as much as for what they can still contribute as players? Dwane Casey: Huge. Big time. I see both of them contributing because of Jose’s 3-point shooting. He did a great job in Cleveland last year and to get those guys, Ed and his staff did a great job of what we had to work with as far as our cap is concerned. They did a great job of plucking those guys off and getting the guys who are really going to help us.
Casey: The other kid we haven’t talked about is Bruce Brown and Khyri Thomas. Those two kids, so that group together, the free agents, the rookies, that’s an infusion of a lot of good pieces to the way we want to try to play. Bruce Brown could play point, two, three – he definitely can guard all three positions. That young man has a bright future, as does Khyri. Khyri was off and on with injuries this summer so Bruce had a great summer of working, nose to the grind, but I expect a lot of the same things from Khyri.
Keith Langlois: Also at your press conference, you said “our time is now.” I’m extrapolating from that, but I’m guessing you’re not going to tell your team that “we’re scrapping to get into the playoff field” and leave it at that. Without giving away your message when you gather for training camp, what is your big-picture view of what you have here? Dwane Casey: That we’re a good team. We’re better than what people are saying – that we’re right there hanging around the eighth spot. No, no, no. We’re a better team than that. But it’s up to us to go out on the floor and show everybody and proving it by going out on the floor and doing it and working and being a tough-minded team on the floor. It’s up to us to do it, but I envision us – and I know we’re better than what people have us ranked because of the talent of a Blake Griffin, Andre Drummond, Stanley Johnson, Reggie Jackson, the guys we have, the young players we have to infuse with them, it’s just too much there for us not to be better than just scratching into the eighth spot of the playoffs.
Former Raptors and current Pistons head coach Dwane Casey appeared on SiriusXM NBA Radio on Thursday afternoon and had nothing but good things to say about his former star DeMar DeRozan to hosts Brian Geltzeiler and David Griffin. “DeMar DeRozan is like a son. I love the young man . . . The first person I met when I walked into Toronto, into the press conference was DeMar DeRozan. He was there, coat and tie suit, his second year in the league, young kid: ‘Coach I’m here, I’m yours’ . . . “I look at him and he’s a big part of what I look back on in Toronto, watching that young man grow, watching him become a 3, 4-time All-Star, All-Pro in his career. When I first got there, when he ran a pick-and-roll he’d throw that joker three rows up in the stands. The last two, three years he was our best pick-and-roll player. We put him in pick-and-rolls just as much as Kyle (Lowry), running the show because of the size, passing ability and that type of thing.”
