You still havent realized Kyrie dont matter? LeBron is the common denominator. And a sweep is a sweep. Not to mention Budenholzer was averaging 30 wins a season after that point. Keep thinking he a upgrade tho.
Dwane Casey fired by Toronto
- Thread starter cnc
- Start date
They have an excuse without Irving and Haywood anyway. They're playing with house money.
I bet @largebillsonlyplease somewhere happy as fuck. 
Most def. Them fans was done when Kyrie went out. It was on some "see you next season".
Most def. Them fans was done when Kyrie went out. It was on some "see you next season".
Dude should have at least won ONE game period
I still think he is an upgrade. He took a Hawks team with Joe Johnson being the best player to a 60 win season. That says alot.
Lowery and DeRozan need to go!! Niggas will never show up come playoff time.
I bet @largebillsonlyplease somewhere happy as fuck.
Most def. Them fans was done when Kyrie went out. It was on some "see you next season".
I'm not actually
I ain't actually want him to lose his job man
I hope he gets another one like right now
I'm sure I can find a quote of me saying this was going to happen.
There ain't a coach in the league that can make that team beat Lebron.
Lebron's numbers literally cancelled out Lowry and Derozan's numbers combined.
Now for benching Derozan, and having VanVleet who was having shoulder problems taking game winners, Casey should catch some flack for that, but fired is overkill.
But who the fuck can they bring in to do better? Nobody. Lebron has literally made every playoff team he beat in the east of the last 7 years CHANGE COACHES.
The Bulls, the Knicks, the Bucks, the Nets, the Celtics, the Wizards, the Pacers, the Pistons, the Hornets, the Sixers - after getting beaten by Lebron, within a couple seasons of losing to him, they changed coaches.
It's the players. The East needs to get the talented cats off of the bum teams in the West.
Put Lillard on the Sixers, Booker on the Bucks, Leonard on the Raptors, Nurkic on the Pacers, D. Jordan on the Wizards.
Some shit like that is the only way the East is going to be competitive again.
There ain't a coach in the league that can make that team beat Lebron.
Lebron's numbers literally cancelled out Lowry and Derozan's numbers combined.
Now for benching Derozan, and having VanVleet who was having shoulder problems taking game winners, Casey should catch some flack for that, but fired is overkill.
But who the fuck can they bring in to do better? Nobody. Lebron has literally made every playoff team he beat in the east of the last 7 years CHANGE COACHES.
The Bulls, the Knicks, the Bucks, the Nets, the Celtics, the Wizards, the Pacers, the Pistons, the Hornets, the Sixers - after getting beaten by Lebron, within a couple seasons of losing to him, they changed coaches.
It's the players. The East needs to get the talented cats off of the bum teams in the West.
Put Lillard on the Sixers, Booker on the Bucks, Leonard on the Raptors, Nurkic on the Pacers, D. Jordan on the Wizards.
Some shit like that is the only way the East is going to be competitive again.
Shit truth be told one of the names very well might be in Cleveland, a second is a long shot
Dwane Casey lost his job over them two CHOKE ARTIST bumms with OVO fest tickets.
No team with kyle bumm lowry and demar debumzan as "leaders" seriously. They are only stars because they are in Toronto. and why the FUCK are they all stars any way?
Nigga derozan fouled lebron so he can QUIT. Niggas must REALLY hate lebron if they put their stock in those to bumms to knock off lebron, each time they come up smaller than Scott Lang.
No team with kyle bumm lowry and demar debumzan as "leaders" seriously. They are only stars because they are in Toronto. and why the FUCK are they all stars any way?
Nigga derozan fouled lebron so he can QUIT. Niggas must REALLY hate lebron if they put their stock in those to bumms to knock off lebron, each time they come up smaller than Scott Lang.
It was the way they lost that Got him firedThat shit's crazy. Casey did his job during the year and they were the number one seed out of the East. 82 games is worth a whole lot more than an impossible series against one of the greatest players ever.
Shit's like NE firing Belichick in 07 after going 16-0 and losing to the Giants.
I'll say what's known. If he was...man, fuck it. You already know.
To be 100. It was they way they lost. Your team has to at least compete. The Raptors were losing in embarrassing style for 3 playoffs.
Black on Black crime
East teams are mainly in cold weather cities in the north. The few that are in the South have 0 legacy or history and mainly suck (Hornets, Magic, Hawks, etc). Those 2 factors are why most players prefer playing in the West. The warm weather always gives teams in those cities an edge in talent.
As for your point about how many teams in this decade in the East have fired coaches or started over because of LeBron, that is very true and rarely mentioned.
I disagree with the East not being competitive. Its not as talented but it is definitely more competitive than the West and entertaining. The West is overrated competition wise. Not 1 western playoff has gone 7 games or been engaging. The Warriors are a defending champ loaded with stars but still dont get primetime coverage because no one gets up to watch all star teams dominate lesser talents. Its not uncommon to see fans of premier West teams on this board post and interact more during East playoff games than the West. The East is more dramatic.
Yeah the more I think about it.....it may be for the best if he can get one of those jobs like the Bucks or someone that's a contender. Bucks just need coaching and a vet.
There probably is more competition out East especially this year.......but I can't get past all of the stars out West and then looking at teams like the Raptors and Wizards out East. Even the Heat. None of them are threats because they like stars. Add Paul George to those teams or Leonard? They pose a much bigger threat.
Toronto has a flawed team. They have two pretty good players who aren't going to take you anywhere but the playoffs
and Ibaka is done. Dude must be four years older than he says he is.
He mattered when he made that shot
and Ibaka is done. Dude must be four years older than he says he is.
He mattered when he made that shot
There is a talent disparity between those teams and the best of the west but not the west as a whole. There are plenty of teams in the West that have 0 shot as well. And again watching all star teams dominate lesser teams isnt entertaining. Even in the game thread, Warriors and Rockets games get the fewest responses.
Dirty
And who put him in position to make that shot? Kyrie is an interchangeable piece. Ask Terry Rozier.He mattered when he made that shot
He'd do great with the bucks they'd run an offense and have a solid defense and they're probably not mentally weak like the raptors
He needed to be perfect with those fragile dudes and that's a high bar
Mark Jackson
Kyrie Irving averaged 27 points a game that series and had a higher +/- than Lebron in that game
Where was Kyrie before LeBron?Kyrie Irving averaged 27 points a game that series and had a higher +/- than Lebron in that game
Where is Kyrie now?
Where is Kyrie team now?
Where is LeBron?
This really isnt as hard as you're making it young man.
and would Lebron have won without Kyrie, bottom line? Nobody else averaged 11 points on the team.
So bringing a title to Cleveland he has Kyrie to directly thank for that.
We dont know that. We've seen Bron win without Kyrie. Never seen Kyrie win without Bron.
We do know that. You keep talking about Kyrie as if he was a bit player during the series and a role player like Thompson or JR.
He averaged 27 points, two less points than Lebron. He was a integral part in Lebron winning for Cleveland.
No. Im talking about him like hes interchangeable. Like his team doesnt miss him. And like his prior team is at the exact same place they were a year ago with him.
Yes he was. And they are at the same place in May of 2018 without him as they were in May 2017 with him.
I like him as a coach but what you said makes sense.
Aint his Fault.
Raptors were never gona be shit in the 1st place.
My lonely Bulls been handing them their asses for years.
Even with D Rose on crutches.
All Toronto got is Drake!
Raptors were never gona be shit in the 1st place.
My lonely Bulls been handing them their asses for years.
Even with D Rose on crutches.
All Toronto got is Drake!
@largebillsonlyplease
thoughts on this defense of Casey?
https://deadspin.com/dwane-casey-pa...ce=deadspin_twitter&__twitter_impression=true
Dwane Casey Paid For All The Mistakes The Raptors Never Made
Albert Burneko
Yesterday 4:06pm
Filed to: TORONTO RAPTORS
86.7K
11315
Photo: Rob Carr (Getty)
They did everything right.
When Masai Ujiri took over as the general manager of the Toronto Raptors, in May of 2013, he inherited a weird misshapen mess of a team that had won 34 games the season before, and 23 the season before that. It still had Andrea Bargnani on it, for God’s sake.
But it also had DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry, and Jonas Valančiūnas, and Dwane Casey was the head coach. If DeRozan and Lowry seem like obvious stars now, they definitely didn’t at the time: DeRozan was a promising 23-year-old who’d put up empty, inefficient scoring numbers and not much else on bad teams; Lowry was a rotund 26-year-old who’d never averaged more than 14.3 points over a season and was on his third team already, owing to a reputation as a surly malcontent. Casey had won less than 35 percent of his games in two seasons as the team’s coach. But between then and this morning, when he announced the firing of Casey, Ujiri replaced everybody else, except those four.
A well established article of conventional wisdom is that big-time NBA free agents, the caliber of players who can choose where they play, do not want to move to Canada; generally speaking, hot-shot incoming rookies have seemed lukewarm on the prospect, too. Working within these constraints, Ujiri built and continually replenished the Raptors’ roster through the middle and back of the draft and through wise trades. If not all the lumpy project players they’ve brought aboard this way have panned out—it’s probably a bit past time to stop waiting around on Bebê Nogueira, for example—Casey and his coaching staff have shepherded a downright stunning number of Ujiri’s raw hires along the developmental path from gawky, green uselessness to genuine on-court basketball value.
Here’s a fun fact: This season the Raptors gave regular minutes to 11 players, and only three of them—Lowry, big man Serge Ibaka, and sharpshooter C.J. Miles—have ever played even a minute for another NBA team. Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, Jakob Poeltl, Delon Wright, Norm Powell, Fred VanVleet, Valančiūnas, DeRozan: all developed in-house, under Casey’s and Ujiri’s stewardship. None of them regarded as sure-thing prospects when the Raptors acquired them, and all of them now important contributors to a team that won 59 games and the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. No other current NBA team comes close to measuring up to this; even the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers, lately regarded as models of player development, are comparatively loaded both with sure-thing blue-chip lottery picks and expensive free-agent hires. It’s a stunning accomplishment.
Everyone had to do everything right, for it to happen. The front office had to identify the unpolished prospects to take on, out of a perennial sea of lanky doofuses with springs in their legs and on their fingers. The coaching staff had to identify the right sets of skills those prospects could develop in order to become the best and most useful possible versions of themselves, and how to teach those skills so they’d take root in awkward goobers like Siakam and Valančiūnas, and the lineup combinations and minutes rotations that would allow those prospects to test out those skills in live game action without nuking their confidence or tanking games. Casey had to trust his team’s fate and his own job security in the hands of untested youths from far-flung corners of the earth, and did, when most coaches do not. And those youths had to bust their fucking asses and eat shit to get better and become real players of consequence, while also not holding back a team that expected to win games along the way.
DeRozan successfully added a three-point shot nine years into his career. Even more shockingly, so did Valančiūnas, a seven-foot mauler who’d never previously been comfortable more than a handful of feet from the rim, in his sixth NBA season. Lowry, in his 12th season as a pro, adapted to the need for more ball movement and a quicker pace, even though it would mean sacrificing a ton of touches and shots. The team pretty much completely overhauled its approach to scoring baskets. All of this afteryears—whole years!—of succeeding doing things a whole different way.
Think of all the ways they could have screwed this up! Not even the big, spectacular, Naked Gun ways—just the mundane ways even competent organizations and coaches and players screw things up.
Ujiri’s front office could have grabbed one or two of the wrong projects—not even totally worthless Jan Veselý types, but just guys whose developmental tracks, even if they moved swiftly along them (a rarity even for blue-chip types, to say nothing of raw international players) would lead them into friction or redundancy with their teammates. They could have bundled up their blossoming youngsters and decided to cash them in short-sightedly, as assets to acquire, like, Andre Drummond; they could have decided to cash them in cynically for more assets with later sell-by dates and punted the promise of success and accountability over the horizon. Casey’s coaching staff could have crammed weirdly contoured skillsets into the wrong roles, or rotated minutes in ways that left vulnerable young dudes in disastrous, confidence- and reputation-killing lineups. Somebody could have given, say, Pascal Siakam the idea that he needed to focus on building his low-post scoring arsenal, rather than on useful stuff like screening and cutting and defense, and turned him into a pumpkin. DeRozan could have settled for the All-Star skillset he already had, instead of working to expand his range and become an All-NBA force. Lowry could have sulked and poisoned the locker room when the team asked him to give up control of the ball. Ujiri could have traded him away any of the myriad times that seemed to be on the table over the past few seasons. Casey could have stood pat on the stagnant, isolation-heavy style that the team rode to success, instead of doing the work of trying for more.
They did none of that. They avoided every pitfall. What they did instead is, they did everything right, for five years. Young Raptors fans have the immense privilege of not knowing just how astronomically rare a phenomenon that is: In an entire adult lifetime of rooting for a sports team you might never get a solid half-decade stretch in which every part of the organization does a good job in concert with all the others and the club rises steadily from irrelevance to sustained excellence and reason to expect even better than that. Franchises sometimes win actual championships without ever once putting together a stretch like that!
The Raptors did it, in Toronto, without ever scoring a top-three draft pick or landing a big marquee free agent. They nailed every part of it. And the half-decade in which they did it just happened to coincide with the reign, over the Eastern Conference, of the greatest player in the history of the sport. For getting the short end of that cruel and impossibly unlikely fluke of cosmic happenstance, they fired their coach. It was a mistake, and it was the first one they’ve made in a long time.
thoughts on this defense of Casey?
https://deadspin.com/dwane-casey-pa...ce=deadspin_twitter&__twitter_impression=true
Dwane Casey Paid For All The Mistakes The Raptors Never Made
Albert Burneko
Yesterday 4:06pm
Filed to: TORONTO RAPTORS
86.7K
11315
Photo: Rob Carr (Getty)
They did everything right.
When Masai Ujiri took over as the general manager of the Toronto Raptors, in May of 2013, he inherited a weird misshapen mess of a team that had won 34 games the season before, and 23 the season before that. It still had Andrea Bargnani on it, for God’s sake.
But it also had DeMar DeRozan, Kyle Lowry, and Jonas Valančiūnas, and Dwane Casey was the head coach. If DeRozan and Lowry seem like obvious stars now, they definitely didn’t at the time: DeRozan was a promising 23-year-old who’d put up empty, inefficient scoring numbers and not much else on bad teams; Lowry was a rotund 26-year-old who’d never averaged more than 14.3 points over a season and was on his third team already, owing to a reputation as a surly malcontent. Casey had won less than 35 percent of his games in two seasons as the team’s coach. But between then and this morning, when he announced the firing of Casey, Ujiri replaced everybody else, except those four.
A well established article of conventional wisdom is that big-time NBA free agents, the caliber of players who can choose where they play, do not want to move to Canada; generally speaking, hot-shot incoming rookies have seemed lukewarm on the prospect, too. Working within these constraints, Ujiri built and continually replenished the Raptors’ roster through the middle and back of the draft and through wise trades. If not all the lumpy project players they’ve brought aboard this way have panned out—it’s probably a bit past time to stop waiting around on Bebê Nogueira, for example—Casey and his coaching staff have shepherded a downright stunning number of Ujiri’s raw hires along the developmental path from gawky, green uselessness to genuine on-court basketball value.
Here’s a fun fact: This season the Raptors gave regular minutes to 11 players, and only three of them—Lowry, big man Serge Ibaka, and sharpshooter C.J. Miles—have ever played even a minute for another NBA team. Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, Jakob Poeltl, Delon Wright, Norm Powell, Fred VanVleet, Valančiūnas, DeRozan: all developed in-house, under Casey’s and Ujiri’s stewardship. None of them regarded as sure-thing prospects when the Raptors acquired them, and all of them now important contributors to a team that won 59 games and the top seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs. No other current NBA team comes close to measuring up to this; even the Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers, lately regarded as models of player development, are comparatively loaded both with sure-thing blue-chip lottery picks and expensive free-agent hires. It’s a stunning accomplishment.
Everyone had to do everything right, for it to happen. The front office had to identify the unpolished prospects to take on, out of a perennial sea of lanky doofuses with springs in their legs and on their fingers. The coaching staff had to identify the right sets of skills those prospects could develop in order to become the best and most useful possible versions of themselves, and how to teach those skills so they’d take root in awkward goobers like Siakam and Valančiūnas, and the lineup combinations and minutes rotations that would allow those prospects to test out those skills in live game action without nuking their confidence or tanking games. Casey had to trust his team’s fate and his own job security in the hands of untested youths from far-flung corners of the earth, and did, when most coaches do not. And those youths had to bust their fucking asses and eat shit to get better and become real players of consequence, while also not holding back a team that expected to win games along the way.
DeRozan successfully added a three-point shot nine years into his career. Even more shockingly, so did Valančiūnas, a seven-foot mauler who’d never previously been comfortable more than a handful of feet from the rim, in his sixth NBA season. Lowry, in his 12th season as a pro, adapted to the need for more ball movement and a quicker pace, even though it would mean sacrificing a ton of touches and shots. The team pretty much completely overhauled its approach to scoring baskets. All of this afteryears—whole years!—of succeeding doing things a whole different way.
Think of all the ways they could have screwed this up! Not even the big, spectacular, Naked Gun ways—just the mundane ways even competent organizations and coaches and players screw things up.
Ujiri’s front office could have grabbed one or two of the wrong projects—not even totally worthless Jan Veselý types, but just guys whose developmental tracks, even if they moved swiftly along them (a rarity even for blue-chip types, to say nothing of raw international players) would lead them into friction or redundancy with their teammates. They could have bundled up their blossoming youngsters and decided to cash them in short-sightedly, as assets to acquire, like, Andre Drummond; they could have decided to cash them in cynically for more assets with later sell-by dates and punted the promise of success and accountability over the horizon. Casey’s coaching staff could have crammed weirdly contoured skillsets into the wrong roles, or rotated minutes in ways that left vulnerable young dudes in disastrous, confidence- and reputation-killing lineups. Somebody could have given, say, Pascal Siakam the idea that he needed to focus on building his low-post scoring arsenal, rather than on useful stuff like screening and cutting and defense, and turned him into a pumpkin. DeRozan could have settled for the All-Star skillset he already had, instead of working to expand his range and become an All-NBA force. Lowry could have sulked and poisoned the locker room when the team asked him to give up control of the ball. Ujiri could have traded him away any of the myriad times that seemed to be on the table over the past few seasons. Casey could have stood pat on the stagnant, isolation-heavy style that the team rode to success, instead of doing the work of trying for more.
They did none of that. They avoided every pitfall. What they did instead is, they did everything right, for five years. Young Raptors fans have the immense privilege of not knowing just how astronomically rare a phenomenon that is: In an entire adult lifetime of rooting for a sports team you might never get a solid half-decade stretch in which every part of the organization does a good job in concert with all the others and the club rises steadily from irrelevance to sustained excellence and reason to expect even better than that. Franchises sometimes win actual championships without ever once putting together a stretch like that!
The Raptors did it, in Toronto, without ever scoring a top-three draft pick or landing a big marquee free agent. They nailed every part of it. And the half-decade in which they did it just happened to coincide with the reign, over the Eastern Conference, of the greatest player in the history of the sport. For getting the short end of that cruel and impossibly unlikely fluke of cosmic happenstance, they fired their coach. It was a mistake, and it was the first one they’ve made in a long time.