Dwane Casey vs SVG: A battle of styles

Dwane Casey seems like the right man for the job as the head coach of the Detroit Pistons. How does he compare to Stan Van Gundy?

Dwane Casey just completed a full season as the Detroit Pistons’ head coach. He showed a lot of promise as someone who can build a winning culture, but his weaknesses did not go unnoticed. One thing is sure — he’s not Stan Van Gundy.

Van Gundy was a meticulous guy. He’s a micromanager. He’s like Lord Business from the Lego Movie. He likes things glued to their places and even the slightest deviation from the plan can trigger the “50 shades of red” effect on his face. Not much freedom is allowed within his system and messing up can get you pulled in a matter of seconds.

Casey is different. He teaches basic principles of spacing and movement in order to establish good habits. A player is given a role, but there’s much more leeway within each role. He empowers players, as he likes to call it, to be the best they can be. He even let Andre Drummond shoot freaking threes. That’s a lot of freedom.

Both styles have their pros and cons, so let’s examine.

A coach’s preconceived notions about what a player can and can’t do are not perfect representations of reality. For example, SVG thought Tobias Harris couldn’t run a pick & roll even though math said otherwise. Harris was a very good pick & roll ball handler in small doses but was never given the chance to expand on that, even when Reggie Jackson was injured. Instead, we got the “Avery Bradley is the first option” experience.

Players are limited by their coach’s perception of them. So, allowing them to make mistakes and figure themselves out as cogs of the machine is a key part of optimizing the roster.

Things don’t always go your way. In the NBA adversity hits often and hits hard and any plan, no matter how masterful, is thrown to the gutter. Stan Van Gundy seemed like a guy that taught players exactly what to do. One of them goes down and roles could change so drastically that nobody knows what to do anymore.

There’s not a lot of practice time. With so many games and travel, there’s little time to practice during the season, so micromanaging is a tall task. Teams start figuring you out after a while, countering your schemes and your players have nothing to rely on. The offense becomes a total mess. Offering a solution to every single problem and a counter to every defensive gimmick is impossible.

But SVG’s approach meant attention to detail as well.  With time on his hands, he could prepare his guys like no one else. That was evident during “the most competitive sweep of all time” against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Those guys knew exactly what to do to match up with the Cavs and were confident that the scheme was going to work.

That also explains why the Detroit Pistons started hot every season (Josh Smith doesn’t count) under SVG. They were one of the best-prepared team in the league and Van Gundy gets the credit for that.

Casey is completely different. The Pistons started the series against the Bucks totally unprepared. They started both Thon Maker and Bruce Brown. That makes no sense whatsoever. Then Luke Kennard started in Game 3 despite the fact that Blake Griffin came back from injury.

They didn’t have a plan for slowing Giannis down in transition, they didn’t have a plan for Maker being wide open on every possession (well, their plan was Maker shooting a bunch of 3s, which is a terrible plan) and they didn’t have a plan when the Bucks started overplaying/denying every single hand-off. I have no doubt in my mind that SVG, even without Blake, would have done a better job against the Bucks.

Freedom is not always a good thing. Give too much freedom to your children and the whole house will descend into total chaos. They’re going to start jumping on the bed, Andre will take 18 attempts, Stanley Johnson will shoot 8 threes and Blake will post up on every possession. NBA players are generally overconfident. It’s a big reason why they’re in the league in the first place. It’s the coach’s job to define their roles.

That’s a big part as to why Reggie and Andre struggled early on in the season. Jackson suddenly was stripped of the ball and was asked to find a way to help without it. Casey rarely calls plays, which, along with Jackson’s health, allowed Reggie to drift into obscurity and have a minimal impact until January.

In addition, Drummond, being a franchise player his whole life, finally had the freedom to prove his haters wrong and it totally backfired in the first half of the season. He tried to do too much and creativity is not really a strength of his.

However, Dwane Casey’s approach seems like the best one to build the team moving forward. Freedom may allow more mistakes, but it also allows players to reach their full potential. You don’t know what a player can do until you let him do it. It’s a short term sacrifice, and it did cost us a bunch of games this season, but it pays off in the future.

Allowing for mistakes is a teaching method. You can tell a child that the toy store is closed, but they won’t know for sure until they see it with their own eyes. Drummond may have struggled for half a season but he’s more self-aware for it. He has a better understanding of his role and how to impact the game without his number being called.

Jackson may have been invisible for half a season, but now he has found the right balance between attacking and deferring. That’s not something you learn simply by someone telling you. Trial and error is a big part of self-betterment.

Building good habits takes time, but when it happens one can reach a whole different level of performance. Adding nuance to the system becomes a whole lot easier because you can add different sets and actions that use the same basic patterns. A new set is not an unknown, but a different variation of something known.

It’s much easier for the players to learn more things in a shorter amount of time and it showed. Casey and his coaching staff displayed more complexity, movement and off-ball actions in a year than SVG did in four.

It’s also a real solution to adversity. When roles change, players have basic principles of spacing they need to preserve and rules they need to follow. The spacing still works and the offense still flows from one action into another. The foundation is still there.

While SVG’s attention to detail could be exactly what a title contending team needs, Casey’s approach seems like the best way to lay the foundations of a winning program.

Stan Van Gundy gave his players fish. Casey is trying to teach them how to fish.