{"id":14926,"date":"2018-05-11T12:03:06","date_gmt":"2018-05-11T16:03:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonnba.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=14926"},"modified":"2018-05-11T23:09:00","modified_gmt":"2018-05-12T03:09:00","slug":"report-toronto-raptors-fire-dwane-casey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2018\/05\/11\/report-toronto-raptors-fire-dwane-casey\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Toronto Raptors Fire Dwane Casey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN has reported that the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprobasketball.com\/nba-teams\/toronto-raptors\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Toronto Raptors<\/a> have fired head coach Dwane Casey. The move comes after the Raptors were swept in the second round of the playoffs by the <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonprobasketball.com\/nba-teams\/cleveland-cavaliers\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Toronto has fired coach Dwane Casey, league source tells ESPN.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wojespn\/status\/994961105809235968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">May 11, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2><strong>Report: Toronto Raptors Fire Head Coach Dwane Casey<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Casey had been leading the Raptors since 2011. The franchise went to new heights during his tenure, having three 50-win seasons and an Eastern Conference Finals appearance in the 2016 season. 59 wins this past season was a franchise high and the Raptors were able to secure the no. 1 seed. But after being eliminated by the Cavs for the third consecutive year with two of the series resulting in a sweep, the organization felt the change was needed.\u00a0Would this be the first time a coach is fired the same year they win Coach of the Year? The NBA Awards are in June and Casey is a possibility to win the award.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>The Business Side<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>Moves like this show just how tough the business side of the NBA can be at times. Not even a franchise high in wins can help job security. It was felt this was the year the Raptors would finally get over the hump and potentially reach the NBA Finals and dethrone <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/j\/jamesle01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>LeBron James<\/strong><\/a>&#8216; Eastern Conference reign for the past seven years.<\/p>\n<p>Casey pulled out all the tricks he could in order to give the Raptors a chance. He had his stars <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/derozde01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">DeMar DeRozan<\/a><\/strong> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/l\/lowryky01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><strong>Kyle Lowry<\/strong><\/a> buy into a new offensive system that relied heavily on ball and player movement. Putting trust in a bench filled with rookies and second-year players was another move made by Casey. All of it seemed to be coming to fruition during the regular season.<\/p>\n<h3><strong>Going Forward<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p>It will be interesting to see what direction the Raptors go in. Could this be the first move of many for the organization as they decide to blow it up? Time will only tell. For the coaching position, look for them to possibly stay in-house and pick <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/s\/stackje01.html?utm_campaign=Linker&amp;utm_source=direct&amp;utm_medium=linker-\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Jerry Stackhouse<\/a><\/strong> as the new man. He has been coaching the Raptors G-League Affiliate, Raptors 905, and has been in contention for other head coaching positions.<\/p>\n<p>Main Photo<\/p>\n<div class=\"getty embed image\" style=\"background-color: #fff; display: inline-block; font-family: Roboto,sans-serif; color: #a7a7a7; font-size: 11px; width: 100%; max-width: 594px;\">\n<div style=\"padding: 0; margin: 0; text-align: left;\"><a style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/577824782\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><\/div>\n<div style=\"overflow: hidden; position: relative; height: 0; padding: 66.66667% 0 0 0; width: 100%;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"display: inline-block; position: absolute; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; margin: 0;\" src=\"\/\/embed.gettyimages.com\/embed\/577824782?et=gsVV6uoTTMtKYh-bqXf0fA&amp;tld=com&amp;sig=0Ux7fjJBpXdAxn_nhr0_dxrB6xsqtFIHdb70RwejtU4=&amp;caption=true&amp;ver=1\" width=\"594\" height=\"396\" frameborder=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>After leading them to a franchise record 59 wins, the Toronto Raptors fire Dwane Casey. He has been with the organization since 2011 and led the team to three 50-win seasons and an Eastern Conference Finals appearance in 2016. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1013,"featured_media":14929,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,62,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14926","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-nba","category-raptors"],"modified_by":"Lior Kozai (Managing Editor)","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14926","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1013"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14926"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14926\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14929"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14926"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14926"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14926"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}