The newly appointed Detroit Pistons coach, Dwane Casey, has had a very peculiar few months.

Here is a brief timeline of his year since April (the end of the regular season).

April 11, 2018: The Toronto Raptors finished their regular season play with a 59-23 record,

good enough for first in the Eastern Conference.

May 7, 2018: The Raptors got swept be the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference

Semifinals.

May 11, 2018: Dwane Casey is fired by the Toronto Raptors.

June 11, 2018: Dwane Casey is hired by the Detroit Pistons.

June 25, 2018: Dwane Casey wins NBA Coach of the Year.

In a two-month period, Casey: set a franchise record for wins, got fired and won an award for his prior

coaching job. Although this is most likely not how Casey envisioned his season ending, it could

not have turned out any better for the Pistons.

Casey set four different franchise records for wins in his seven-year tenure with the Raptors and received praise from sources across the NBA last season after he completely revamped their offense and took a group that had seemingly hit their ceiling, and tapping in to an entirely new level. The changes Casey made weren’t colossal, but they were the right choices based on the pieces he had that led to the team being ranked top five in the league in offensive and defensive efficiency.

That is the main reason Pistons fans should be excited about this hire. Casey made a major change and upgrade to his team without any major changes to the roster. This makes him the ideal person to take over the Pistons job because they are not likely to have any major roster changes anytime soon.

Power forward Blake Griffin was acquired at the trade deadline last year and his contract is virtually untradeable. Griffin is currently in year two of his five year, $271 million contract, so in short, he’s not going anywhere. The hope is that Casey can find out a way to creatively use Griffin and center Andre Drummond together and help them both maximize their star potential on the court together.

Maximizing potential is something Casey did incredibly during his tenure in Toronto. It was not only his willingness to change that made him effective, but his player development was consistently one of the strongest parts of his resume. 

Toronto could not have gotten to where they were last year if it were not for their bench. They saw major contributions from players like Fred VanVleet, Jakob Poetl and Pascal Siakam. VanVleet was even a finalist for the sixth man of the year award this past season.

If this follows suit for Casey in Detroit, then he will have a chance to turn players like Luke Kennard, Stanley Johnson and Henry Ellenson into solid role players. These three are recent first round draft picks of the Pistons who all saw their fair share of neglect under the Pistons’ previous coach Stan Van Gundy.

One can only hope that Casey is the man that unlocks their potential and does a similar revamp of the Pistons bench.

Early reports indicate that Casey plans on scrapping the dribble-handoff system that Van Gundy implemented and will install a system similar to the one that Mike D’Antoni put in when he took over the Houston Rockets job. This game-plan places an emphasis on three-point shots and shots at the rim.

Next season with Casey at the helm will, at the very least, be far more entertaining to watch for Pistons fans. The young players will likely see an elevated role in the offense, and look for Griffin and Drummond to work together in far more interesting ways.