The Detroit Pistons have agreed to a five year deal with former Raptors coach Dwane Casey. The move was foreshadowed for the last several days and Casey was seen as a front-runner from the moment he was fired by the Raptors.

Who is Dwane Casey?

Dwane Casey was born in 1957 (he is now 61 years old) in Indianapolis, Indiana. When he was very young his family moved to Morganfield, Kentucky where he would spend the rest of his childhood. He was a standout high-school basketball player and played college ball at the University of Kentucky where he was a part of the 1977-78 NCAA Championship team there. Casey went Undrafted and never played in the NBA or anywhere else professionally, instead, he immediately started his coaching career. He spent time at both Western Kentucky and Kentucky. Casey's time with Kentucky ended after he was caught up in a recruiting scandal (although his name was later all but cleared) which led him to the Japanese Basketball League. He spent five years in Japan, which included helping to coach the national team.

Casey left Japan in 1994 when he received an assistant position with the Seattle SuperSonics where he remained for the next 11 years. While with the SuperSonics Casey continued to work with the Japanese national team over the Summer. In 2005 Casey got the job as head coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, his first NBA head coaching job, where he went 53-69 and was fired after only a season and a half. When he was fired the Timberwolves were 20-20.

Following his tenure with the Timberwolves, he spent three seasons as an assistant with the Dallas Mavericks and was on the staff when the Mavericks defeated the Miami Heat in the 2011 Finals and is often given a great deal of credit for keeping LeBron James in check for the series. The following Summer Casey would get the head coaching job of the Toronto Raptors.
Casey would spend the next seven years with the Raptors, his first two seasons were unsuccessful, but in his third year the Raptors pulled off a now fairly legendary accidental playoff appearance and birth of the most successful stretch in franchise history. After trading away Rudy Gay (Whom they had acquired the previous season) to really get their tank on, the Raptors suddenly became really good as it turned out that Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan were all-star caliber players. Despite a lack of playoff success that includes several bonafide collapses, Casey oversaw a five-year stretch where the Raptors won more games than any other team in the conference. He was fired after the Raptors were swept in the second round of the playoffs by the Cavaliers this post-season.

The Good

The best news is that, in a nutshell, Dwane Casey knows what he is doing. Even if a younger, up and coming coach, may have been more attractive for reasons we will get to later. There would be a real risk with going that route. The Pistons kind of have to win next season and with an expensive roster that is suddenly full of a lot of veterans they did not have much wiggle room for an inexperienced coach to learn the ropes. With Casey, there are no worries in that department. He knows exactly what is required of an NBA head coach and everything that comes along with it, there is no learning curve.
Beyond that, the best news is the way Casey handles himself. Where Stan Van Gundy was an often petulant and polarizing personality, Casey has been fairly widely beloved by nearly everyone who he has coached and has a good track record of getting guys to play at their best by instilling confidence in them. Casey is still fairly disciplinarian, which isn't a change from Van Gundy, but the way he goes about it is noticeably less off-putting.

From that ability to make most of his players like him, he is an expert at getting a team to play together and on the same page. Under Casey, you can expect the Pistons to play disciplined ball on both ends of the floor, execute at a fairly high level, avoid turnovers, rebound, and play with effort night in and night out. Casey is also a good enough professional that it is highly unlikely that he will allow the Pistons to fall back into the total crapshoot that they were before Van Gundy arrived. He should be able to take the culture of effort and professionalism Van Gundy put in place over the last four years and build on it.

The Raptors have consistently been in or near the top ten in both defensive efficiency and rebounding percentage under Casey, while also turning the ball over at low levels. All of which are marks of a well-coached team. This is particularly impressive when you consider that the Raptors have not been consistently throwing out lineups full of elite rebounders or defenders. Jonas Valanciunas is a very good rebounder but has never been a high minutes guy, and they have good defenders on the roster. Andre Drummond is a better rebounder and defender to anchor a defense than Casey ever coached in Toronto, given that beyond Drummond (and Stanley Johnson) the Pistons are not overflowing with defensive talent it is good to have a coach with a record of doing more with less on the defensive end.

Lastly, despite many schematic issues (which we will get into in a moment) with the offenses that Dwane Casey has run in Toronto, it is worth noting that the results were hard to argue with. The Raptors were a top 10 offensive team each of the last five years, and top six the last four years. So for all the worrying that is about to happen with how the offense will look under Casey, remember that sometimes ugly works, and if it ain't broke don't fix it.

The Bad

About that offense, it was ugly. Really ugly. Before this past year, the Raptors offensive scheme was basically "Hey Kyle/DeMar go score please" and that's it. They were consistently at the bottom of the NBA in three-pointers and passes per game. The three-point mark is especially absurd when you consider that Kyle Lowry is bombing 7+ three's off the dribble per game. They had a pair of ball dominant players who could get buckets in isolation and that was pretty much it. The good news is that the Pistons do have an elite isolation player on their roster in Blake Griffin, in fact, Griffin is better than Lowry or DeRozan ever have been in this regard. Reggie Jackson is also really effective in isolation and simple pick and rolls, so there is hope.

Here is the problem, both of those guys are injury prone. Kyle Lowry broke down year after year in the playoffs because he couldn't handle the offensive load, I don't even want to think about what will happen to Jackson's knees. And then the question becomes, what happens to the offense when Griffin or Jackson are out? How do they compensate? Beyond that, the Raptors offense has fallen apart in the playoffs to such spectacular levels that Casey was fired despite winning so many games and being so wildly successful with the Raptors.

But still, they were awesome! You said it yourself, top 6 the last 4 years!

Here is the comparison. The Raptors were awesome on offense, but they still had a bad offensive scheme. Back in the 2012-2013 season, the Oklahoma City Thunder had the second-best offense in the NBA, only barely behind the Miami Heat. They scored 110.2 points per 100 possessions, an absurdly good number. They also didn't shoot that many three's didn't pass that much, and their offense was basically "Hey Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook go score please." The Raptors were basically that but with worse guys at the top (and better guys around them FWIW) and guess what, those Thunder teams had similar problems with producing offense in the playoffs when opponents were locked in because they were so predictable.

Just to hammer that home, the Thunder played the same way, with a pair of MVP's on their roster, and they ran into all kinds of problems when it counted. When you have a pair of all-stars instead of MVPs you have the playoff collapses that the Raptors have had. Blake Griffin is the type of player who can make that style work, when he's healthy Reggie Jackson can too, but they are certainly not as good as Durant/Westbrook and both are likely to miss at least 10-20 games this year/not have super heavy minutes loads.

Beyond the lack of offensive scheme, Casey is a coach who is consistently stuck in his ways. This is actually my biggest gripe with the hiring. Stan Van Gundy's biggest shortcoming was not his demeanor, or that he couldn't put together good schemes on either side, but that he was far too slow to make adjustments when things didn't work. That is also Casey's blind spot, but its an even bigger one for him than it was for Van Gundy. He will inevitably roll with some players who play poorly and let them play for way longer than they have any right, run sets that are worn out, and generally be stubborn against any sort of change. In essence, this is the primary problem with Casey, the biggest coaching issue the Pistons had with Van Gundy just got worse.

But the offense was different this past year?

Yes, the Raptors shot a ton more three-pointers and passed more while generally being less iso-heavy. It is hard to know exactly what is true and what isn't, but the way it's been told is that Casey was very hesitant to overhaul the offense but was basically forced into it by GM Masai Ujiri demanding it. After Ujiri made the demand, assistant coach Nick Nurse has been given nearly all of the credit as the architect of the overhaul. It is impossible to know for sure, but the way the story has typically been painted was that Casey had very little to do with the offense changing and was, in fact, a hindrance to it.

Best Case Scenario

Whether by him having a larger hand in the overhaul than portrayed or that he simply learned its value, Casey brings a similar offensive focus of this past year to ensure that the Pistons don't fall into an ugly iso-heavy style of basketball. This combines with the change of demeanor having a hugely positive impact on the team and some good health and the Pistons make the most of their considerable offensive skill to be an elite offensive team while they remain solid on the defensive end.

Casey proves that he didn't just luck into a great GM who put great pieces under him in Toronto but that he has a genuine ability to get guys to play at a high level by having everyone on the same page. He also develops guys in a way that Van Gundy couldn't, gets Andre Drummond to become a defensive player of the year, Stanley Johnson learns to shoot, Luke Kennard becomes a solid defender. All of this comes together and with this roster, Casey leads the Pistons to their first championship in over a decade.

Worst Case Scenario

Casey doesn't learn from his shortcomings in Toronto and it turns out that the Raptors success had more to do with Lowry and DeRozan than Casey. The Raptors have another great season while the Pistons look no different than they did with Van Gundy. Even when healthy the Pistons are underwhelming but injuries continue to plague them. After a disappointing season the Pistons make major changes to the roster but keep Casey around following a re-tool but he does no better. After three years of no playoffs, isolations, and not enough three-pointers the Pistons fire Casey and restart from scratch.

The Verdict

The Pistons could do worse, Casey is a fairly proven commodity. For him to really be successful then the Pistons have to hope for one of two things. First option: that Casey really used his firing from Toronto as a learning experience, comes out stressing the value of three-point shooting, passing and has a real offensive scheme in place which results in an elite offense while he is also quicker to make adjustments. Whether this happens at his own adjustment or by him bringing in (and trusting) smart assistants doesn't matter, as long as it happens. The other reason for hope is that even if Casey doesn't learn from past shortcomings is that if the Pistons are healthy they probably have enough talent to be a good team regardless of scheme. Casey basically does the Scott Brooks thing in OKC where he isn't some great Xs and Os guy but players like him and play hard on both ends, and there is enough talent that simply having everyone playing hard and together every night is enough for a high-level team.

I'm very excited to see what Casey can do, he obviously had a ton of success in Toronto and even if it comes with the playoff disappointments if the Pistons can reach similar success as the Raptors over the last five years it would be a success. I just worry that Casey is going to take a roster that needs some pushing towards modern NBA offense (not posting up Drummond regularly, getting the rest of the roster to shoot threes, not over-burdening Jackson and Griffin etc) and push them in the opposite direction. There is a decent chance that Casey's hands-off approach to offense results in lots of Drummond post-ups, Griffin and Jackson isolations, and not nearly enough open threes for Bullock and Kennard. That is what is worrying. In all likelihood this hire changes little for the Pistons, the catalyst for their success is going to be keeping Jackson and Griffin mostly healthy. If they can manage good health Casey won't do too much to hamper the team at least, and it is possible he will help quite a bit.

The last thing with all of this that is a bit of a wild card is that we don't know for sure what various players thought of Van Gundy. He has always been a fairly polarizing coach among players in his career, guys like J.J. Reddick speak very highly of him while others (most notably Dwight Howard) have really disliked his style. Whether right or wrong, if the majority of the roster was sick of Van Gundy's antics this could be a hugely positive move. On that one though, only time will tell.