Toronto Raptors head coach Dwane Casey impressed this season, leading his team to a franchise record 56 regular season wins, and making it all the way to the Conference Finals before falling to the Cleveland Cavaliers in six games. At this point, it’s pretty clear that Casey is going to stick around in Toronto. The two parties are reportedly currently working towards a contract extension. Raptors GM Masai Ujiri voiced his confidence in Casey today. From James Herbert of CBS Sports:
Toronto Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri all but confirmed that coach Dwane Casey would receive a contract extension. Casey is the fourth-longest-tenured coach in the NBA, having been in Toronto since 2011. Under his guidance, the Raptors have gone from the lottery to the Eastern Conference finals, though there have been stumbles — most notably a first-round sweep at the hands of the Washington Wizards last season — along the way.
“I’ve had discussions with his agent,” Ujiri said on Monday. “We continue to discuss. But coach Casey is our coach for the future. I think that’s very easy for us to figure out. That’ll be done in our sleep, I think.”
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“I sat here, I know everybody thought I was BSing when I said coach deserves to be the coach here,” Ujiri said. “I believed in this team is what I said before we went into that series. You kind of know from your guys what you’ve gone through the whole regular season. You’ve been in fights and battles with them. I don’t know what the outcome is going to be. You really know where you can rely on them. Honestly, we knew this from these guys. They showed it to us the last three years. It’s why we keep going and going and trying and giving them the best opportunity and putting them in the best place that we can. I cannot say if we lost that series, I can’t say what would have happened, because we didn’t lose it.”
Casey is a good coach, and has the trust of his players. Star point guard Kyle Lowry has been especially vocal about his support for Casey.
