Someday, maybe, Pistons fans will appreciate the job Dwane Casey did.
Someday, maybe, he’ll get credit for building a bridge — for being one, really — while everything else around him was getting razed.
Someday. Maybe. That’s about all you can say about the Pistons’ future prospects at this point, a dozen years after owner Tom Gores bought the team with a promise to do “whatever it takes” to win a championship and a so-called plan that has taken far too many wrong turns.
But on this day, at least, it was Casey’s turn to take the high road and find a graceful way to announce his own exit as Detroit’s head coach, following meetings with Gores and general manager Troy Weaver this past week.
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“It’s just time,” Casey told reporters following the Pistons’ season-ending loss in Chicago. “I met with Tom, I met with Troy, talked to them about it. They left it up to me to do it.”
It had to be done, obviously. Coaches don’t get to keep coaching at this level when their teams lose the way Casey’s have in Detroit. The Pistons own the NBA’s worst record over the last four seasons (80-222, .265) and narrowly avoided matching a franchise record for fewest wins (16) this season by winning Friday night at Indiana.
Yet it’s worth remembering that the job he’s leaving for a role in the front office next season certainly wasn’t the one Casey was hired to do five years ago.
Back then, he was the reigning NBA Coach of the Year, a veteran bench boss who’d been dumped by Toronto after another playoff loss to LeBron James and wooed to Detroit by Gores & Co. in the hopes that he could get a mediocre roster over the postseason hump. Which he did in his first season, led by Blake Griffin, before the perennial All-Star’s knee gave out and reality started to hit home.
“And then things changed,” said Casey, stating the obvious about what came after, particularly when Weaver arrived and began doing what should’ve been done here long before that. “We took it down to the studs.”
Which meant the coach ultimately became a carpenter, and that’s hardly something Casey intended to be at this stage of his career. Still, he’d signed a five-year deal worth $35 million in 2018, had an extra year tacked on to that a couple of summers ago, and seemingly embraced his mandate these past few years when it came to letting the rookies play and letting the chips fall where they may.
“And, you know, hopefully, my legacy will be the growth in this program from these young guys, giving them a foundation,” said Casey, whose locker room has remained surprisingly free of drama and dissension — a rarity in today’s NBA. “I don’t care who you bring in, with a young team, this league’s not forgiving in wins and losses. … I’m not trying to run away from that. I understand that and knew that going in. And hopefully, I handled it the right way.”
He did, honestly. And so did ownership in the end, it seems, by allowing Casey to announce this move on his own terms.
“Not a lot of coaches have that opportunity,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the next chapter in my life.”
Writing on the wall
It wasn’t hard to read the writing on the wall in recent weeks, as the Pistons kept losing games and the fans grew evermore disenchanted. Weaver even penned a letter to season ticket holders last week, essentially thanking them for their patience while asking for a bit more at the end of another brutal winter.
And it was plain to see this was coming after the Pistons’ final home game of the season Wednesday, when Gores was in attendance but opted not to meet with the media for a season-ending chat as he has in the past. Instead, there was a lengthy delay in Casey’s postgame press conference as he met with Gores and Weaver behind closed doors.
When the coach finally did speak to reporters, there was a notable shift in tone from Casey, who’d spent much of this past season talking like a man who expected to be back on the bench next fall.
“We just met,” Casey said after that loss to Brooklyn. “We just talked about how we’re going to look at everything and meet again after we’re all done and see which way we all want to go as far as the organization.”
But much like it was with the Red Wings and Jeff Blashill a year ago, this is exactly the way it was destined to end, with a rebuilding team starting to feel the heat, desperate to turn a corner and in need of a fresh start.
As Casey acknowledged Sunday, “I’m sure it’s been wearing on the players, and a new voice would be really good for ‘em.”
Whose voice will it be? That’s just one more question for Weaver to answer now, and it’s an important one, obviously.
Who’s next?
There are career assistants who’ll get consideration, including a couple who’ve worked under Casey here in Detroit: Rex Kalamian, who’s on the staff now, and Sean Sweeney, the Mavericks’ assistant who was here from 2018-21. Charles Lee, the longtime top assistant to Mike Budenholzer in Milwaukee and Atlanta, is only 38, but he’s due for his chance to take over a team. Brooklyn’s Bryan Keefe and Toronto’s Adrian Griffin are others with ties to Weaver from his time in Oklahoma City.
But there are bigger names out there that Gores and others in the Pistons’ front office undoubtedly find intriguing.
Former Celtics head coach Ime Udoka is less than a year removed from leading Boston to the NBA Finals. But his season-long suspension and eventual dismissal thereafter an alleged improper relationship with a female subordinate could be disqualifying for some teams.
Jerry Stackhouse is a familiar name for Pistons fans and also an accomplished young head coach now, winning a title with the Raptors’ D-League team in 2017 and then turning Vanderbilt into a winner in the college ranks the last few years.
And there’s another Hall of Famer from the college game who should get a call, and likely will, given Arn Tellem’s influence. At 61, Jay Wright, who won two NCAA championships at Villanova before abruptly retiring and spending this season as a CBS analyst, hasn’t ruled out a return to coaching.
Whoever it is will inherit a core of young, self-motivated talent that starts with Cade Cunningham, Jaden Ivey and Jalen Duren and should add another top-five pick this summer. There are veterans who can help that group make a big leap in the standings next year, too, in Bojan Bogdanovich and Alec Burks. And Weaver has the salary-cap space this offseason to make a major upgrade via free agency or the trade market.
But the next coach also will have Casey to thank, for enduring the growing pains along with this young roster.
“That’s what’s important for me,” he said Sunday, when given the opportunity. “Just to see those guys grow and mature and come around, that’s what’s important. And I hope that our fans will see that, and appreciate where these guys are going and where they’ve been.”
john.niyo@detroitnews.com
Twitter: @JohnNiyo