The Toronto Raptors could be inching closer to a new contract with head coach Dwane Casey.
This is, of course, entirely expected given the comments from both Casey and Masai Ujiri in the last week, but ESPN’s Marc Stein provides some additional insight, saying the two sides are progressing toward a deal and there’s optimism it will be done this week.
Forgive the brevity here, but this is something that’s been touched on plenty in the last few days. (My own personal assumption was that the team would have an announcement ready for the draft workout media availability sessions on Wednesday or Thursday.) Casey and Ujiri seemed as if a deal was more or less done, and there’s been little to suggest there will be any hiccups.
Here’s Casey, from his season-ending media session Saturday:
“It’s about the team, I’ll let my agent handle all that. Again, that’s the last thing on my mind as far as wanting to sit down and talk about that. That won’t be the first subject I hit on, that’ll be how to make our team better.”
And here’s Ujiri from his session Monday:
“I’ve had discussions with his agent. We continue to discuss. But Coach Casey’s our coach for the future. That’s very easy for us to figure out. That will be done in our sleep.
…
To me, I sat here, I know everybody thought I was BSing when I said coach deserves to be the coach here. I believed in this team is what I said before we went into that series. You kind of know from your guys what you’ve gone through the whole regular season. You’ve been in fights and battles with them. I don’t know what the outcome is going to be. You really know where you can rely on them. Honestly, we knew this from these guys.”
While there was a bit of doubt around Casey’s job status int he first round of the playoffs (despite Ujiri’s vote of confidence), this seems a forgone conclusion now. Casey is the franchise’s winningest coach, has been at the helm for the three best regular season the team’s had, as well as their longest postseason run, and has grown in his flexibility, willingness to change, and overall effectiveness behind the bench. He has his flaws, as all coaches do, but there’s a reason he’s the NBA’s fourth-longest tenured head coach despite being inherited by Ujiri rather than hired: He’s pretty good. Imperfect with some of the micro tasks required of a coach, but very good in the macro matters of effort sustenance, culture building, managing through injury and adversity, and, perhaps most importantly, fostering buy-in from stars.
Casey’s earned his team option being picked up, at the very least, and the likely multi-year extension coming his way will be one he earned, too.
More when the deal is done.
