Three things Dwane Casey can focus on next season with the Pistons

Dwane Casey’s first season with the Detroit Pistons was a success. But what can he do next season to help take the team to the next level?

Dwane Casey’s first season with the Detroit Pistons can be considered as a success. After being fired by the Toronto Raptors, Dwane was named the NBA Coach of the Year. In the award show, he took shots at the Toronto Raptors and thanked Tom Gores for the opportunity with his new team.

This year with a new team and a new organization, he had expectations to help put the Pistons in a playoff spot. And although the season was a roller coaster ride, Casey delivered on those expectations. The Pistons made the playoffs for the first time since the 2015-16 season. And overall their second playoff trip in 10 seasons.

He’s already matched Stan Van Gundy’s playoff appearances with the Pistons. And he only needed one season to do so. But like Van Gundy in his playoff appearance with the Pistons, Casey showed that there are areas that he could improve on.

Finding a reliable offense.

The Pistons were not great offensively this season. They were 24th in the league in points per game, 23rd in three-point percentage, 23rd in assist percentage, 28th in pace, and 26th in true-shooting percentage. A lot of this could be faulted towards the team’s inability to make threes. But the NBA has sped up. Teams play at a much faster pace than they did 10 seasons ago. Casey has to find a way to get the offensive moving quicker. In the first half of the season, Casey’s most reliable offensive weapon was the Blake Griffin post up. If the Pistons struggled to hit shots, they just set up a play to dump the ball down low to Blake Griffin. This strategy ate up a lot of the shot clock for the Pistons. And a lot of the times they were forced to take a bad shot with 4 seconds or less in the shot clock. The second half of the season showed a quicker style of play. They put the ball in Reggie Jackson‘s hands more often. This helped create offense for Andre Drummond. Before, Andre Drummond was almost a non-factor in the Blake Griffin offensive show. But with the ball in Reggie Jackson’s hands, Drummond was able to play more pick-and-roll and become involved in the offense. But the pick-and-roll should not be their main offensive weapon. If Casey can find a way to draw up better plays, Pistons will improve offensively.

Finding the right rotation.

The Pistons starting lineup was all over the place this season. Dwane Casey had just about every wing player on the Pistons start multiple games. The Pistons started Glenn Robinson III for the beginning of the season before switching him out with rookie guard Bruce Brown. Bruce Brown would eventually be put back on the bench for Luke Kennard. Then after a couple bad losses to lottery teams, Casey switched back and inserted Bruce Brown into the starting lineup for the rest of the season. Wayne Ellington would take Reggie Bullock‘s starting spot. Bullock was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers before the trade deadline. But the Pistons were never able to have a consistent starting lineup. Casey was unhappy with how the lineups would perform. And the bench rotation was even more of a mess. Inconsistent minutes for some players that deserved more; other players with minutes they didn’t deserve. Casey costed the Pistons a couple of games with a couple lineups he used to finish off games. Multiple games where Reggie Jackson received less minutes than Ish Smith. And Ish Smith was able to finish off games instead of Reggie. Fixing this issue early on the year next season could result in more Pistons wins.

Better out-of-bounds plays?

The Pistons were terrible at in-bounding the ball this season. There were many possessions were they just handed the ball over to the other team; leading to a bucket. The Pistons need to avoid doing this as often as they did. Casey could go over some in-bounding plays with the team. They could try out different players in-bounding the ball to see who is capable of doing so without turning it over.

What do you think Casey should focus on?