nitetrain8603 wrote:Why was he fired in Minny? He seemed to have a poop team and had them at .500 in the Western Conference. Why did he get canned in that season?
He was fired because he wasn't part of the inner circle in Minnesota. Before his final season, Taylor forced him to take on Wittman (whom Taylor had had interest in hiring before the Casey hiring, and had been an assistant in Minnesota under Saunders) as his assistant, which effectively submarined any authority Casey could hope to have. By the time he was fired it seemed as if he had lost the team, Ricky Davis in particular (there were whispers that Casey asked for Davis to be traded numerous times).
If you can't tell, I think Casey got an incredibly raw deal here in Minnesota. He had possibly the toughest job in the NBA. One superstar with his clock ticking, a bunch of overpriced, veteran malcontents, a group of younger players not ready to contribute, an incredibly guard heavy roster, and unrealistic expectations from management. He exceeded any realistic expectation for the roster, but got canned in favor of a guy that's never won more than 39% of the games he coached in a given season, but that was an old friend of those running the organization.
What are his offensive philosophies?
It was tough to tell. He seemed to favor a jump shooting approach, but a lot of that had to do with the roster he had on his hands. The Wolves typically had good spacing, and at times had terrific ball movement. He liked to make every defender on the other team work, and would give isos to guys like Trenton Hassell a fair amount. Aside from a couple nice designed alley-oops, there was never anything too special coming out of timeouts.
How about defensive philosophies?
He didn't seem to like to foul, and played preferred man-to-man over zones. He was fairly similar to Nate McMillan on this side of the floor (and the offensive side as well, but he's not as adept as McMillan on that end), which makes sense, since they spent a lot of time together in Seattle.
Is he a player's coach or a disciplinarian?
He had a bit of a reputation as a disciplinarian, but it's tough to tell because he was classy enough to handle everything in house and not use the media to try and get his point across. Absolutely a stand up guy by all accounts, along with being a hard worker.
Was he decent at player development?
McCants made some nice strides under his watch, as did Marcus Banks, Justin Reed, Trenton Hassell, Ricky Davis and Mark Blount. Wally Z was playing the best basketball of his career under Casey when he was traded as well. Mike James fell off big time under Casey, but how much of that can be put on Casey is unknown. He got a lot of credit as a player development guy in Seattle (you should make this post on that board as well), namely with Rashard Lewis.
Pro's/Strengths?
Great character guy, accountable, hasn't said a bad word about the Wolves since they screwed him over, had a team full of career bad defenders (outside of KG) playing very good defense, spaced the floor well, hard worker.
Negatives?
Not a great game coach (although he had shown incremental improvement in his game management), tendency to get wacky with his rotations and try to work in too many players, not overly creative on the offensive end, eventually lost the team (I don't put a lot of that on him, he had a nearly impossible roster to manage).
I really hope the guy gets another shot, he got a raw deal here, and was showing improvement in areas of weakness before he got the axe.