Amidst a calamitous end to the season, there’s been a flood of op-eds from writers all around. Many people – fans and writers alike – have a sense that Masai is about to blow this team up. While it’s true that everyone is expendable at this point, no one really has any idea what’s about to happen as much as they try to gain admission into Masai’s tight-leashed decision-making World which rarely leaks.
Each team has a different path to development, but there is a way to gauge what your next move should be by judging what successful teams in recent memory have done.
Comparing the Toronto Raptors’ brand of basketball to any of the other 15 teams in the playoffs puts everything into perspective. There is not a single team in this year’s post-season that had the same failure in executing basketball fundamentals than Dwane Casey’s Atlantic Division winning team.
Starting the rebuild from the head-coaching position seems like the most logical first step.
Dwane Casey is a tremendous human being and one of the best assistant coaches around – but a head coach who can lead a developing NBA team and take them to the next level, he is not.
To be more specific about what Dwane Casey is actually doing wrong, you can first look at offensive execution. The Raptors are stagnant on offense with little movement. The Raptors are a team riddled with great shooters, right? This is the reason given for a gung-ho isolation-based movement-deprived offense which somehow leads to a surprising lack of rebounding despite three-four other offensive players on the court knowing that the ball handler is about to shoot the ball.
Inexcusable. To prove just how flawed the reasoning for this offensive ‘scheme’ is, look no further than the Golden State Warriors who posses by far the best shooting backcourt in the NBA. The Raptors’ ability to shoot and drop buckets of points from the perimeter essentially is completely trumped here. Yet, Golden State – who can probably iso the hell out every offensive possession if they wanted to – are one of the most unselfish teams in the NBA.
I can’t emphasize this enough. One of the greatest offensive backcourts in the history of the NBA is statistically the third least selfish team in this year’s playoffs. The Warriors’ 26.3 assists per game are good for third best in this year’s post-season.
Their regular season numbers are even better as they ranked first in that category with 27.4 apg which led to great looks all over the floor and saw them shoot 47.8% from the field – also a league best. Sure, you get some wild shots within the ‘flow of the offense’ from Steph Curry who pulls up and takes contested transition threes as if they were lay-ups – but that’s him. Curry has the green light to do it because he’s incredible at doing so.
Go down the list of assist leaders and you’ll see the correlation between being good and moving the basketball. Atlanta was second, the Clippers third. Boston – the anomaly that finished the season incredibly strong since the trade deadline and impressively squeezed into the postseason without much talent – came fourth.
You have to go really far down to find the Raptors. Scroll past the Pistons, Nuggets, Bucks, Pacers, Nets, Knicks, and Lakers and you’ll spot the Raps at 20th in the league in apg.
There are stats that might back-up Dwane Casey’s green light for offensive freedom from the perimeter given that the Raptors did shoot 45.5% from the field this season which is above league average. But, at that point you’re settling for mediocrity and refusing to be better just because something is somewhat working.
In this case, why change, and not continue to let Dwane Casey develop? It’s true that the Warriors were not a contender last season. They were extremely fun to watch but didn’t have what it takes to take the next leap. But the team wasn’t blown up, they continued to develop, and now have a more than legit chance to win the championship. And that’s not because the competition is weak, it has to do with the Warriors being historically good.
Why the leap? You’re probably already shouting the answer at this point: A head-coaching change.
Sure, the Warriors could have stuck with Jackson who won 51 regular season games in a tenacious Western Conference. They could have let him develop and learn from his mistakes after finishing 20 games above .500.
But Jackson wasn’t going to change or adapt in order for that team to leap from good to great. There is no indication Dwane Casey is any different. Casey just about justifies every bad decision he makes. He has justified the Raptors’ lack of ball movement attributing it to the Raptors’ ability to hit shots within the flow of the offense. He’s justified benching James Johnson when the Raptors struggled to defend the perimeter and had issues rebounding, labeling Johnson a ‘match-up player who’s time will come’.
His time? Never came.
Casey also justified his extreme use of small ball stating “If I had Tyson Chandler, he probably wouldn’t be in the game… It’s no disrespect. It’s just the style of play.”
Similarly Mark Jackson had issues – albeit different ones. Steve Kerr came in and brought the best out of Golden State’s backcourt – allowing Curry to come off screens more and taking him out of the play-making point guard role. The Warriors’ offense is a thing of beauty, everyone is always moving – a sharp contrast to what the Raptors are doing. Their defense is also gorgeous. Sure, in Green and Bogut they have players who can defend like Raptor players can only dream of, but the effort is key. The Warriors are extremely quick in their defensive rotations and are basically at their spots before the ball is even moved.
The Warriors went from a good coach to a great one, and you can see what it did for their team. Hence the coexistence between change and continuity. One major change while the core of the team continues is about as sound as you get.
What’s up with this Dubs’ love-fest anyway? The Raptors aren’t on their level, clearly. The point is that the Warriors play the right way and stick to fundamentals: Effort and ball movement. Those are both within any NBA team’s grasps, and it starts with the head coach. The Raptors’ rotations are a defensive mess. It’s bewildering that on every single possession, the Wizards got everything and anything they wanted to as the Raptors cluelessly scrambled around the court.
It would be really interesting to see what a next-level coach would do with Jonas’ usage rate. I feel like he’s undervalued within the offensive system, but I’ve already touched on that enough, plus Zarar is throwing a Jonas article your way later today.
Don’t ask me just who that next head coach is, because only Masai knows, and there’s no use to speculate. Off the top of my head, Thibs would be a dream if it’s true he’s not going to stick around in Chicago past the post-season. Then again, who knows? Maybe Masai keeps Casey on for the remainder of his contract.
I’ll leave you with this fantastic analysis of the Raptors’ collapse which Coach Nick published yesterday.
