The Detroit Pistons hired Dwane Casey to take the team to the next level.
He inherited a terrible roster with some of the worst contracts in the NBA, but managed to win 41 games in his first season and led the Pistons to the playoffs, a place they haven’t been since.
Detroit has won just 63 games in the three years since, as Casey watched his career record go into the toilet while trying to lead a rebuild, which is probably not what he expected when he initially took the job.
Kudos to Casey for sticking around, and same to the Pistons, who identified Casey as a respected veteran coach who is known for getting the most out of his young players, as he did for his entire career with the Toronto Raptors.
The Pistons aren’t expected to be much better next season, and may even be tanking again, which actually puts Casey in a tough spot.
You’d think coaching a tanking team has a lot less pressure than coaching one with high expectations, but it offers it’s own unique set of challenges that Dwane Casey will face next season.
Detroit Pistons: Who will be on Dwane Casey’s team?
Coach Casey will head into next season with a whole lot of question marks around the roster, as they have several veteran players who may start the season with the team but probably won’t be there past the trade deadline.
The Pistons signed yet another player yesterday, so more moves are coming and we are just a couple of weeks from the beginning of training camp. This roster will likely be shuffled right up to the moment training camp starts. It may just be minor moves, but is also possible that the Pistons will get involved in a big trade to take on assets.
Even if Detroit doesn’t make any major moves before training camp begins, they are likely to jettison Kelly Olynyk, Cory Joseph, Alec Burks, Nerlens Noel and Kemba Walker at some point during the season, so his roster will likely look very different in a few months.
It can’t be easy to plan when there is so much uncertainty, especially when it’s unclear if the team really even wants to win.
Detroit Pistons: Dwane Casey needs to win! (But not too much)
If you are like me, then you are sick of watching this team lose. The Detroit Pistons aren’t going to skip steps and rush their rebuild, and I mostly agree with this approach, but that doesn’t change the fact that constant losing weighs on the players, coaching staff and especially the fans.
We want to see some sign that there is light at the end of this dark tunnel of losing, so Casey will be under some amount of pressure to increase the team’s win total. It won’t take 50 wins for this season to be considered a success, but fans are looking for some improvement in the win column.
That’s not to mention young players like Cade Cunningham, who are not used to losing. Like I said, they don’t need to win the Eastern Conference, but some positive steps would be good for the team, fans and the young guys.
We want them to win…but not too much!
Of course it would be great for the Pistons to surprise everyone and make the playoffs next season, but since that is extremely unlikely, there is no point in winning too many games, as Detroit would like to put themselves into the Victor Wembanyama sweepstakes if they are not going to make the playoffs anyway.
So Coach Casey needs to win enough to show improvement, but not so much that Detroit ends up with the 9th or 10th pick in the 2023 NBA Draft.
This will likely be out of his control, as the Pistons could trade (or sit) all of the veterans, leaving him with the youngest team in the league. If that happens, the team could actually be worse than last season, and people will point the finger at Casey even though he has no control over the roster.
We’ll hear a lot of “Casey’s rotations suck!” when the truth is he was never given the tools to win, and it’s not clear if the team even wants him to. His main job is to develop young talent, and even that is no easy task.
Detroit Pistons: Dwane Casey and player development
Coaches of rebuilding teams not only have to worry about the present, but also the future, they have two things going at once.
Every coach wants to win, and that is the goal, but coach Casey will also be juggling the development of young players, trying to get them all minutes, and trying to identify which guys are part of the core moving forward.
He has to figure out how Cade Cunningham and Jaden Ivey fit, as well as juggle the other guards on the roster, as Killian Hayes’ team option has to be picked up in October, so the team needs to see plenty of him.
The team wants to get extended looks at guys like Hamidou Diallo and Kevin Knox, while trying to see how Saddiq Bey and Isaiah Livers might fit together.
They have five centers all trying to get minutes, so again, he’ll be juggling what’s best for the team (which may mean playing the veterans more) against trying to get minutes for 18-year-old Jalen Duren, the center of the future.
A coach’s natural instinct is to play the best guys and try to win, but when a team is rebuilding, that may not be the route you are asked to take, putting your own future job on the line in the process.
And after all of that rebuilding, Casey could be fired anyway, or will almost certainly be out of the picture one way or another by the time this team is any good. He has to plant trees under whose shade he will never sit, to paraphrase an old proverb.
There isn’t less pressure coaching a rebuild, it’s just different than the pressure coaches are under when their team is expected to win. It takes a unique personality to take on this kind of thankless job, and I don’t envy the task in front of coach Casey.