Revisiting Dwane Casey’s tenure with the Minnesota Timberwolves

In the wake of the Toronto Raptors’ firing of head coach Dwane Casey, let’s relive Casey’s short tenure as coach with the Minnesota Timberwolves.

Following a season that saw the Raptors win 59 games and land the No. 1 seed in the Eastern Conference, Toronto was swept (again) by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers.

While it’s disconcerting for a top-seed to be swept — and in any round, much less the second — caveats apply when it concerns one of the best two or three players to ever lace ’em up in the NBA.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, and while there’s certainly questions that need to be asked of the coaching job (i.e. the method that Casey chose to deploy in trying to stop the Kyle Korver–Kevin Love pick-and-roll, or how they tried to slow down James), it was hardly Casey’s fault that the Raptors lost.

At any rate, Casey’s seven-year tenure north of the border came to a close. It was unquestionably a successful run, as the Raptors had a .573 winning percentage under Casey and were over the .500 mark and in the playoffs each of the last five seasons. But losing in the playoffs wore on the organization and the fanbase, and here we are — only days after winning the NBA’s Coach of the Year award, Casey was let go.

So let’s revisit Casey’s first NBA head coaching gig, back in 2005-06 and into the 2006-07 season with the Timberwolves.

Casey was hired by former front office boss Kevin McHale, who had fired his good friend Flip Saunders mid-season the year prior and coached the team himself at the end of the 2004-05 season. After interviewing several candidates, McHale hired Casey, a Seattle SuperSonics assistant.

Casey inherited a difficult situation, with Kevin Garnett still in the prime of his career at 29 years old, but no other true stars on the team. Wally Szczerbiak was often injured and nearly five years removed from his only All-Star appearance, and McHale had just traded Sam Cassell away for peanuts, only receiving Marko Jaric and Lionel Chalmers (who was cut in the preseason) in return for Cassell and a first-round draft pick.

The other member of the “Big Three” that had led the Wolves to the Western Conference Finals only two years prior was holding out in a contract dispute; Latrell Sprewell would never play in another NBA game.

That meant that Casey inherited Garnett, Szczerbiak, and … that’s about it. Then, Szczerbiak was shipped to Boston in a trade centered around bringing Ricky Davis to Minnesota. Davis was a player that McHale had long coveted, even signing him to an offer sheet as a restricted free agent a few years prior. While he’d averaged 15.6 points per game over the previous four seasons and was scoring nearly 20 per game for the Celtics, he was inefficient, a poor defender, and not exactly a willing passer.

In other words, Casey got the short end of the stick when it came to his roster. After Garnett (76 starts), his most-started players were Trenton Hassell (9.2 points per game in 67 starts), Jaric (7.8 points per game in 49 starts), and half a season each from Szczerbiak and Davis. Not exactly a recipe for success.

The Wolves finished the season at 33-49, just a year after winning 44 games and two years after reaching the conference finals. And those were Garnett’s age-28 and age-29 seasons — talk about wasting a prime player’s prime years.

Casey’s Wolves started the 2006-07 season with a 3-7 record. After a decent November and December, the squad lost four straight games in mid-January and fell to 20-20 — not all that bad considering the team had won just 33 games the year prior and their second-best player was second-round draft pick Craig Smith. But that was it for Casey in Minnesota, and it would be another four years before he got his shot with the Raptors.

All things considered, it was extremely tough to evaluate what Casey did in Minnesota as the roster around Garnett was basketball malpractice. He did what he could with the enigmatic Davis (this was pre-Wolves Davis, but you get the idea), but saying there wasn’t much talent around KG in his prime is generous, really.

There’s plenty to complain about when it comes to how Casey coached in the playoffs over the past few years. But he’s been a solid regular season coach and has overseen a consistently top-five offense and a decent defense for the better part of five seasons with the Raptors.

Next: The Ringer wants an Andrew Wiggins trade

Here’s hoping that Dwane Casey lands on his feet and finds a great third head coaching destination in the NBA. And that Kevin McHale isn’t in charge of player personnel…