It’s Time For Casey To Go… Again

This is a guest post written by Kevin Jia. You can write a guest post for us by clicking here.

Well, it’s 8 games into the 2013-14 season and surprise surprise, the Toronto Raptors are below .500, sitting at 3-5. After watching Rudy Gay go 11 for 37, and DeMar DeRozan go 6-25 against a flu-ridden James Harden and co, I, like many other Raptors fans, have had enough.

The internet bleachers erupted with fervency as enraged fans denounced Gay and mocked DeRozan. It was unbearable. What many fail to realize is that the problem isn’t DeRozan or Gay’s inefficient shot selection, it’s the coaching that results in poor possessions which forces the wings into those shots.

Newly hired assistant Nick Nurse was supposed to provide some improvements in the offense, but it just hasn’t happened. Check out our article last year headlining Casey’s problems. Our stance hasn’t changed very much, as these issues are still very much present.

What do you notice on offense for the Raptors? Pick and Rolls? That’s part of the bread and butter, according to Casey. Post play? Got that covered too. Ball movement? Well…

Don’t be mistaken – a pick and roll and a pass to the post for a 20 foot fade away is technically ball movement. But it isn’t good by any standard. It’s not even NBA caliber offense.

Certainly, one may appropriate that the Raptors aren’t a half-court offensive minded team, and that they shine in transition with their athleticism. Well if that’s so, the Raptors aren’t providing any evidence. They are mediocre in defensive rebounding, disastrous in forcing turnovers (5^th worst) and here’s the punch line — 30^th in assists. That’s right. The league worst. It’s almost fitting that the Raptors are averaging 42% in field goal percentage. Against Houston, the Raptors were appalling in transition, fumbling the ball and unable to finish at the rim on multiple occasions.

So, who’s that to blame? The point guard, right? Certainly, Kyle Lowry could be more of a facilitator, but once again, it’s Casey’s absolutely abysmal offensive sets that are the culprit. Casey can’t run a play out of a time out properly. Casey doesn’t even run Horns – virtually every NBA team runs Horns. If you don’t know what that is, check this video out.

The Raptors offense can be summed up in five words: Poorly organized stagnant hero ball. It seems like all you ever see is either Rudy Gay or DeRozan being forced to take tough shots and make plays. If you are running a baseline iso against a solid defender, you are only going to score at around a 35-40% rate. DD and Gay are both shooting around 36% so far, and I don’t see much improvement in the future with the current offense.

But what about Casey’s defensive coaching? While the Raps haven’t been terrible defensively, they are horrible on rotations which leads to open shots, and always seem to give up the middle, i.e., drives to the rim when it matters the most. I swear, Jonas Valanciunas just comes out for 20 minutes as a spectacle. Why is JV not an anchor in the Raptors defense down the stretch? The whole reason Colangelo drafted him was for paint presence. Additionally, Casey refuses to run a zone defense even when it would be blatantly obvious for a high school coach to do so.

The rotations are still brutal. At least once a game we see a terrible line-up on the floor that doesn’t have Lowry, Gay, DeRozan, or JV on – one of these 4 always should see the floor. Casey’s sporadic rotations with insistence on going small has killed the Raptors multiple times already. The time-out management is still poor as well. We saw a comical act against the Charlotte Bobcats where he failed to call for a foul, which was an absolute embarrassment . However, the bottom line is still the fact that Casey doesn’t know how to use his players offensively. 

The Raptors have pieces. They have talent, potential, athleticism, you name it. This is a playoff bound team and after 6 years of dismal performances, Raptors fans deserve nothing less. Watching the Raptors struggle against weak teams is nothing but frustration. Casey needs to watch some offense-101 videos. But it would certainly be easier, and more efficient, for him to pack his bags.

Unless this team really is tanking, there’s no point in waiting any longer. #FireCasey