From the Raptors to the Pistons, Dwane Casey keeps riding the NBA’s rollercoaster of highs and lows

When Dwane Casey and the Toronto Raptors parted ways in 2018 no team in the Eastern Conference had managed more regular season wins in the previous five seasons than Casey’s Raptors.

In his nearly five campaigns in charge of the Detroit Pistons though, no team has won less often, though his initial Pistons squad finished .500 and made the playoffs.

Life in the NBA can be a rollercoaster, and few know that better than Casey. He will turn 66 next month, but has handled the rollercoaster so well since breaking into the league in 1994-95 that he still looks many years younger than his birthdate.

Which isn’t to say these young Pistons don’t give him more grey hairs on a weekly basis.

“I don’t like the losing part, i can tell you that right now,” Casey said Friday evening before losing a game in a familiar arena he once shared with a prominent coach who did the reverse of his Toronto-to-Detroit shuffle.

“With that being said, and I steal this from (former Leafs coach) Mike Babcock a long time ago: it gets ugly, development is ugly sometimes … (but) there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. You have to have patience,” Casey said.

“Where i am in my career i have a lot of patience because i understand the mission.”

But the man is being tested. Toronto won Friday 118-97 in a game that never felt like it was in doubt. “When you’re young, coming into the league, you don’t know what’s about to hit you,” Casey said afterward. “The way (the Raptors) came out, set the tone, they did what they’re supposed to do. “That’s part of the growth process. This should hurt, the way we got spanked tonight, but we’re in two different situations,” he said.

Toronto remains in the hunt for a play-in berth, while Detroit’s season never gained momentum. Franchise cornerstone Cade Cunningham, the top pick of the 2021 draft, made it through just 12 games before being lost for his sophomore season and the team never recovered. Casey, who lost in the NBA Finals to Michael Jordan as an assistant in the mid-1990s and beat LeBron James in the Finals as an assistant in 2011 is trying to bring along a bunch of kids who only know Jordan as some guy who does something or other involving shoes and were mostly in diapers when James broke into the NBA.

Most of Detroit’s core was born in the 2000s (Cunningham, 2022 lottery picks Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren, Isaiah Stewart, James Wiseman and more) with a few veterans like Canadian Cory Joseph helping him out during games and practices.

Casey turned around the struggling Raptors’ program thanks in part to the lessons he learned along the way, even if he sometimes had to evolve.

“He was here when we were little kids,” said Pascal Siakam after torching his first NBA coach for 32 points and nine assists. “He’s seen us grow … When we came in as rookies, me, Fred (VanVleet) and Jakob (Poeltl), it was always about winning and it helped to build the culture. He was a huge part of that,” Siakam said.

Years later, Casey is once again embracing the challenge of molding today’s young players, who are different than those of the past, something Babcock appeared to be unable to figure out (he has been out of the NHL since being fired by the Leafs).

“You have to change, adapt and be flexible but you still stay with your core values,” Casey said.

“I still have some rules that they call old school but I know they’re important for discipline and accountability. Those never change, but (allowing) music in practice just different things that you have to understand (are the norm now),” he said. Casey also mentioned how certain types of passes were once frowned upon as not technically sound and admitted that as Raptors coach where he was “down on” the three-point shot, which would eventually complete change the way the game is played. “But you evolved as the game goes, if you don’t, you die,” he said.

“You try to stay relevant from that standpoint, to kind of train your team and coach your team which way the game is going. And that helps.”

Casey sounds like he wants to keep coaching — his lucrative contract was extended through next season last year — and considerable help could be on the way. Victor Wembanyama, considered the best prospect since LeBron, will go to the team with the first pick. Detroit’s odds are as good as anyone’s of landing the French giant, or consolation prizes Scoot Henderson or Brandon Miller. Add one of them and the future is looking pretty good all of a sudden in Motown. Add Wembanyama to Cunningham, Ivey and Duren and they’d be the envy of the league.

For now, Casey and the Pistons are trying to get some work done before the season ends and the real intrigue begins.

“As an organization, our ownership, we’re all on the same page, which makes it much easier,” Casey said.

“The expectation is development. And we’re gonna be judged on how these guys grow over these next couple of years … You see the road down in front of them so that that’s what’s easy for me now and it helps.”

The trick is getting there. Casey’s done it before, but, as Siakam said late Friday, a lot of the groundwork was already set when he, VanVleet and the other Bench Mob players arrived.

“Coming in as a young player and having (the environment Toronto had) was a win. Just knowing that it’s not always like that everywhere.”

No. It’s not.

@WolstatSun