The Goat Pen

Jazz general manager Kevin O’Connor said Utah is preparing for the draft with the idea that veteran center Mehmet Okur might not return to action.

“What we’re planning on with Memo is to have him back and have him healthy,” O’Connor said. “How long it takes him to get back and into the flow of things, I don’t know. But you prepare for the worst, and you hope for the best.”

Okur is making progress during his rehabilitation and is expected to be in Salt Lake City by mid-June.
Via Brian T. Smith/Salt Lake Tribune

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Raps decline option on coach Jay Triano for next season. Triano will be retained as a special assistant to the president and GM.

Whenever an old coach is re-hired in the NBA, Nate McMillan knows what Dwane Casey will be doing.

“Paul Silas, who comes to mind, left the NBA for a few years and then he takes the job in Charlotte this year,” McMillan, the Portland Trail Blazers’ head coach, said in an interview on Thursday. “I immediately thought about Casey because I know he went to his garage and got his notes on Paul Silas and what he was running and his calls and had them for [Dallas head coach] Rick Carlisle this year when they played them.”

Casey might be bringing that sort of work ethic to Toronto. After interviewing with the Raptors, the 54-year-old Dallas assistant has emerged as the favourite to be named the coach early next week, according to ESPN reporter Marc Stein. Lawrence Frank, the longtime Nets coach who served as Doc Rivers’ assistant last year, is also being considered.

Casey does not necessarily have all of the experience Raptors president and general manager Bryan Colangelo talked about when he made the decision to move Jay Triano from head coach to consultant more than two weeks ago, but his résumé has become more formidable. He was the defensive guru on Carlisle’s staff, credited with helping to render LeBron James meek in the NBA Finals.

He was a head coach in Minnesota for two years from 2005-07, fired when the Timberwolves started his second season 20-20. (They plummeted after his departure.) And he has worked under a series of the game’s top coaches, from Carlisle to George Karl to McMillan. Both men worked under Paul Westphal in Seattle, before McMillan took over for the fired coach.

“When I came on as an assistant in my first year, he had been an assistant for our team for a few years,” McMillan said. “I started just observing the things that he did. He was well prepared for the meetings. He keeps everything that he ever writes down.

“He totally understands how to communicate with players and understands all aspects of the game: preparation, travel, everything.”

Casey has seemed like a hot candidate for several jobs, to the point where he has started to gain a reputation as a perpetual runner-up.

He lost out to his old boss in Minnesota, Kevin McHale, for the Houston job this summer, when the Rockets were unwilling to wait for the Mavericks’ playoff run to end. He is also believed to be a candidate for Detroit’s vacancy.

“It has surprised me because I think that he is a guy that is prepared. He’s ready for the opportunity,” McMillan said. “He just needs someone to give him that opportunity and to trust him. He had that opportunity in Minnesota. That team was winning. They decided to go in a different direction. I don’t think they were all on the same page as far as ownership, coaching and management.”

Defence and Casey are inextricably linked. The Mavericks held opponents to just 102.3 points per 100 possessions, seventh best in the league. That was believed to be impossible for a while with the slow Dirk Nowitzki at power forward and an aging Jason Kidd at point guard. In Toronto, he would figure to have even greater defensive albatrosses than Nowitzki and Kidd in the forms of Jose Calderon and Andrea Bargnani.

However, McMillan has no shortage of belief that McMillan could thrive anywhere.

“To me, he is really like [Chicago coach] Tom Thibodeau,” McMillan said. “I think he can do some similar things. I think that’s a good person to compare him to because they just won a title. Head coaches don’t win them by themselves. Your assistants, they play a big part as well as the players and the whole organization. Tom Thibodeau is a guy, like Casey, who was in the wings waiting for an opportunity like that.”

Thibodeau paid off for the Bulls, leading them to the Eastern Conference’s best record, earning coach of the year honours along the way. He came to them after a three-year run working as an assistant to Doc Rivers in Boston, where they won a title in 2008 and went to the final in 2010.
Casey does not come with the same guarantee of instant success. If the Raptors opted to hire him, though, the club would certainly not be shortchanged.

“He is a basketball man. That guy lives and breathes coaching in the NBA,” McMillan said. “For a long time he wasn’t married and didn’t want to get married because he was so committed to this game. Just recently he tied the knot, which I didn’t think he would do. I guess he felt he was getting older and needed to do that.”

Indeed, when the opportunity comes along, you have to take it.

• Email: ekoreen@nationalpost.com | Twitter: @ekoreen

Various media outlets around Toronto are reporting that Dallas Mavericks assistant coach Dwayne Casey will likely become the Toronto Raptors new head coach.

Casey's role in orchestrating the Mavericks defense of Miami in the NBA Finals may have pushed him ahead of Lawrence Frank, the other finalist and an assistant coach for the Boston Celtics. The Raptors, who finished last in the league in defensive efficiency, are looking to significantly improve on that side of the ball.

Casey has previous head-coaching experience in Minnesota, where he compiled a 53-69 record in the 2006 and 2007 seasons.
Via CBC Sports

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