The Raptors have picked their next head coach and it will be Dwane Casey who is the hot shot head coaching prospect as he has been credited with putting in the most effective zone defense in the NBA and helped the Dallas Mavericks win the NBA championship as his zone defense took apart the Miami Heat offense. Dwane Casey has been a head coach before with the Minnesota Timberwolves with a record of 53 - 69 and was 20 - 20 when he was fired in 2007 after 40 games into the 2006 - 07 season and he has been an assistant under some good coaches with George Karl and Nate McMillan with Seattle Super Sonics and most recently with Rick Carlisle in Dallas. He would of been the five Raptors head coach at the beginning of the 2003-04 season as he was a finalist for the job that Kevin O'Neil got and now he is going to be the eighth Raptors Head coach. He will need to get some defense out of some bad defensive players like Andrei Bargnani, Sonny Weems, Amir Johnson and DeMar DeRozan but players like Ed Davis will fit in nicely in a defensive system and should become a better player for it and even James Johnson could fit in well with the system and become a better player. If Reggie Evans gets the right deal to stay in Toronto he will feel right at home and would be a great leader for the defensive ballgame and besides that I do not know what kind of defensive player Bryan Colangelo can get through trades or free agency but he will need to do something to better the defensive qualities of this team. As only the Detroit had a worse defensive field goal shooting and nobody can win very many games allowing your opponents to shoot 48 % from the floor as your average and yes 60 point first halves and even 70 point halves came common place with the Raptors and teams shooting 60-70 % in a first half did happen a lot as well.
Brian Colangelo has to hope he made the right choice as he is on a very short leash right now but for the first time in franchise history the Raptors are putting their foot down and saying defense first as when Jay Triano talked about it that was what it was just talk and I know we had guys like Charles Oakley and Doug Christie who were able to shut the other teams top players down but the offense was very good at that point as well with Vince Carter before his franchise contract and he was still a beast on the offense.
The next thing to do is put it in the minds of the fans by instead of given away pizza every time the Raptors score a hundred do it when the Raptors hold their opponents under a hundred
Tom Mehegan
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