There is a decent chance that the Detroit Pistons will be matched up against the Toronto Raptors in the first round of the playoffs next month, meaning that Pistons head coach Dwane Casey will have the chance to battle his former team.
Casey spent seven seasons as head coach of the Raptors before being fired at the conclusion of the 2017-18 season, and he would relish the idea of potentially playing Toronto in the opening round:
“It would mean a lot,” Casey said of possibly seeing the Raptors in the postseason, according to Joe Vardon of The Athletic. “This is a storied franchise in Detroit. There are three championship trophies you see every time you walk into the building. It’s not like in Toronto, where they’ve never tasted it. The fans in Detroit, they know what a championship is all about, and it’s like, let’s get this thing back on track.”
Casey led the Raptors to five straight playoff appearances between 2014 and 2018 and made the Eastern Conference Finals in 2016, where Toronto ultimately fell to LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Losing to James became a running theme for Casey and Toronto, as the Raptors were defeated by the Cavaliers three years in a row, culminating in a four-game sweep in the second round of the postseason last year.
Having won 59 games, Toronto was actually favored to beat Cleveland in that series, but the Raptors blew a double-digit lead in Game 1 and were never able to recover.
Casey's Pistons currently own a record of 31-31.
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