Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra has nothing but praise for Dwane Casey, and he knows that the reigning Coach of the Year isn't the only person who lost his job because of a certain someone named LeBron James.
As Spoelstra talked about Casey ahead of the Detroit Pistons' visit to the Toronto Raptors, he said that Casey didn't do anything wrong. However, he acknowledged the greatness of James who is just difficult to stop — as he learned when he coached the All-Star forward with the Heat.
“I think Dwane has reinvented himself as a basketball coach as much an anybody,” Spoelstra told James L. Edwards III of The Athletic. “It’s a great example. It’s inspiring for me as a younger coach. He came in and was known as a zone coach, and his last few Toronto teams were really tough, mano-a-mano, 5-on-5 defensive teams. Then, last year, they really incorporated the 3-ball, playing with a little more space. He did what they needed to take another step for that franchise. And what happened? He got fired for it. He really did a tremendous job and won the East.”
“There’s a guy that got a lot of people fired.”
LeBron and the Cavaliers were the single biggest reason for Casey's ousting from Toronto. Regular season success was almost a given during his tenure in Canada, and that was evident as the Raptors made the playoffs in five of Casey's six seasons. That being said, the 61-year-old coach was never able to push his team over the hump and advance to the NBA Finals, always falling at the hands of LeBron and the Cavs.
This shouldn't diminish the fact that Casey is an excellent head coach. He just had the unfortunate luck of running into a juggernaut in the playoffs for three years in a row.
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