How Dwane Casey's response to N-word helped fuel rise: It was 'big time'

Vince Ellis | Detroit Free Press

Show Caption Hide Caption Meet new Detroit Pistons coach Dwane Casey A quick look at the newest Pistons coach, Dwane Casey. Video by Ryan Ford, Detroit Free Press.

“Shame!”

“Shame!”

“Shame!”

History unfolded on the TV screen in Dwane Casey's downtown San Antonio hotel room earlier this month.

A mob of protesters were shouting at Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., who had just announced his support for then-Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.

“Shame on you!”

“Shame on you!”

“Shame on you!”

Casey, the first-year Detroit Pistons head coach, was entranced.

A political junkie, the drama unfolding on CNN drew his attention away from the sit-down interview with the Detroit Free Press.

Casey was fixated on the proceedings, from Maine Sen. Susan Collins’ impassioned defense of her decision to support Kavanaugh, who had been accused of sexual assault, to when it became clear that President Donald Trump’s pick was going to be the next Supreme Court justice.

When finality set in, Casey switched the TV to a playoff baseball game.

But his interest in history isn’t surprising.

He has lived it.

And as he begins his quest to return the Detroit Pistons to relevance, the grace and character shown when faced with adversity and conflict in his trailblazing past could help make his tenure successful.

There was the terror of witnessing the Ku Klux Klan when he was young child growing up in Morganfield, Kentucky.

There was the fear of walking through a racist mob when Casey and a small group of black children were ordered to desegregate the Union (Ky.) County school system in the mid-1960s.

He was one of the first black men to play basketball at the University of Kentucky.

But even in his early days, Casey showed an ability to relate to others.

The children of the parents in those angry mobs?

They became friends through sports.

To this day, the coach retains strong relationships with white teammates from Kentucky.

That ability to relate has carried him through a nearly 40-year coaching career in which he earned his profession’s highest honor for his efforts with the Toronto Raptors.

Casey’s next, and possibly final, coaching act is to lead the Pistons in their attempt to recapture local interest and live up to their championship past.

The quest begins Wednesday when the Brooklyn Nets visit Little Caesars Arena at 7 p.m.

But when you compare that trivial concern to his life experiences, his hopeful outlook just might have him prepared for the challenge.

“When you’re faced with situations like that, faced with adversity, you can’t just run from it, we couldn’t just hide from it and not go to school, not participate in sports,” Casey said. “It was one of the first lessons in conflict resolution — of growing up, of seeing people with different thoughts, different ideas and different approaches.”

‘The N-word was big-time’

Casey, 61, was born in Indianapolis but moved to Morganfield when he was a small child.

It was a time of change in the South with blacks, emboldened by the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., demanding equal rights.

Civil rights activist Dick Gregory brought that message to Morganfield, a town of about 3,300 residents, and it created conflict.

As Gregory spoke on the Union County courthouse steps, the Ku Klux Klan rode in..

White-hooded racists sought to intimidate blacks from the back of a pickup. Casey was in the third or fourth grade. .

“That was one my first really scary moments, understanding the Ku Klux Klan or fearing the Ku Klux Klan and seeing them,” Casey recalled. “That was kind of the norms of the time in Kentucky as far as racial injustice or racial separation.

“All those thoughts and ideas were new. My grandparents didn’t know any better. My parents didn’t know any better, so we were all being educated at the same time by Dick Gregory and the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King.”

Another scary moment followed.

Fueled by the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, school systems were forced to comply with desegregation orders, which forced white schools to open their doors to blacks.

Dunbar Elementary, Casey’s first school, was forced to integrate with all-white Morganfield.

Along with other black children, Casey had to endure a picket line of white parents, angry because of the changing times.

“The N-word was big-time,” Casey said. “Once we got into school, the kids had gotten so brainwashed about black kids that they had these preconceived ideas of who we were as people, so we ended up fighting all the time.”

But those fists turned to play.

And that play led to the playing fields where black and white kids learned they had much in common.

Casey befriended those kids, who became his teammates at Union County High, and he speaks of that time without a hint of bitterness.

That’s just the way things were.

“Once the young kids got to know us as kids, they saw we were just like them,” Casey said. “We hurt like them. We had feelings just like them. We loved sports just like them. We weren’t these animals that they perceived us to be.”

Kentucky giant’s helping hand

Casey starred in three sports:

He was was the football team's quarterback but stopped playing after the 10th grade.

His second love was baseball.

And he also was a point guard on the basketball team, good enough to be named all-state.

The University of Kentucky, which even then was a college basketball powerhouse, was an option through the connections of Earle C. Clements, a former Kentucky governor, U.S. Senator and member of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Casey’s grandmother cleaned Clements’ house, and Casey took a side job driving for the Kentucky politician.

Clements, a Kentucky graduate and football player, recommended Casey to a school official.

Kentucky was slow — like most SEC schools — to integrate.

Thirty graduate students, fueled by a successful NAACP lawsuit, enrolled at Kentucky in 1949.

The first black man to play for the Kentucky basketball team, Thomas Payne, enrolled 20 years later.

Casey, along with teammate Truman Claytor, arrived in the fall of 1975.

Not all fans were on board with the change — even blacks questioned the decision considering the school’s past.

When the Wildcats struggled, the team heard whispers that there were too many blacks.

Casey was on the Wildcats squad that won the 1978 NCAA championship, turning those whispers into cheers. As the backup point guard, Casey was still voted team captain.

His college career remains a source of pride.

Casey credits his college coach, Joe B. Hall.

“Coach Hall did not see color,” Casey said. “All he saw was basketball players and you felt that from him. You look at the University of Kentucky today, and there’s no color lines. There’s no counting how many African-Americans there are on the team.”

Hall told the Lexington Herald-Leader in 2017: “Dwane was the most disciplined, organized, ‘having his head-on-straight’ kid I ever coached. And he was a great worker.”

Coaching sticks

After spending one year as a graduate assistant at Kentucky, Casey met with Western Kentucky coach Gene Keady and top assistant Clem Haskins.

Casey’s job responsibilities had been vast during his one season under Hall.. In charge of freshmen development, he had worked with a highly touted class headed by big men Sam Bowie and Melvin Turpin.

Casey also spread the word of Kentucky basketball throughout the state, traveling to predominantly white areas where he didn’t encounter a hint of racism.

Keady met with Casey to pick his brain on training methods. Shortly after that meeting, Keady left Western Kentucky and accepted the Purdue job. Haskins was promoted, and one of his first calls was to Casey.

“He knew the game,” Haskins recalled. “He could coach. He could teach. Everybody can’t teach. Everybody thinks they can, but everybody can’t teach this game of basketball and get young people to work and respond to you or for you and he had those qualities.

“That’s what impressed me more than anything.”

Casey has maintained a strong relationship with Haskins, who attended the Pistons’ exhibition victory over the Cleveland Cavs on Friday in East Lansing.

And Casey said his coaching philosophy is a direct result from his time under Haskins.

“It’s a partnership, it’s not a dictatorship,” Casey said of his relationship with players. “When I first became a head coach in Toronto, I was more of a dictator, wanted to do everything, all the development, defense, offense, whatever it was. The league has changed. The game has changed a lot so I way I approach it, it’s a partnership. Help me, help you, help yourself is kind of the motto I have.

“That’s what works. That’s what motivates players today. I don’t think that approach is going anywhere.”

Casey took the Western Kentucky job, but he was conflicted.

Coaching wasn’t exactly lucrative.

He left Western Kentucky for one year to take a sales job at a Lexington TV station.

But he couldn’t escape the pull of coaching.

“It’s all I’ve ever done,” said Casey, who coached Little League baseball as a teen. “I’m quite sure there are other things that I could have done in life whether it’s working for Humana, teaching in college, high school teacher.

“Coaching stuck. I love watching players improve — even as a Little League coach.”

He spent five seasons at Western Kentucky before returning to his alma mater in 1985.

His star was on the rise.

He was up for the University of New Orleans job when a scandal threatened his coaching career.

‘That opportunity was gone’

Employees for the cargo airline company, Emery Worldwide, made an interesting discovery in Los Angeles in 1985.

A package containing $1,000 was addressed from Casey to Claud Mills, the father of top recruit Chris Mills.

After an NCAA investigation, Kentucky was hit with three years' probation, and Casey received a five-year show-cause penalty, effectively banning him from college basketball.

Kentucky coach Eddie Sutton resigned. Casey did, too.

Casey fought the allegations and sued Emery.

The lawsuit was settled for a seven-figure sum, and the NCAA rescinded the show-cause order when Casey successfully argued there was no proof he sent the package.

The news was a death sentence to his college coaching career.

Casey could have turned bitter, but didn't.

He was still a young man and could have chosen another career path, but didn't.

Coaching had taken root.

“It’s not even like working,” Casey said. “It’s teaching young men, being around a team, but mostly it’s the teaching that’s the important thing. I get just as much out of that as winning and losing games. Watching young men grow and develop into people."

Japan exile, U.S. return

Mototaka Kohama was Casey's savior.

Known as the “Godfather of Japanese basketball,” Kohama spent time in 1979 around the Kentucky program. After the NCAA scandal, Kohama invited Casey to coach in Japan.

Casey told The Undefeated in April 2017 that it was “a lifeline.” He coached in the Japan Basketball League and was an assistant with the national team. He maintained a home in Lexington, and he coached professional summer-league teams in Los Angeles during his exile.

George Karl opened the door for Casey's return to the U.S.

They had known each other while Casey was a Kentucky assistant and Karl was a scout with the Cleveland Cavaliers.

In 1992, Karl was named head coach of the Seattle Supersonics, and two years later, Karl saw Casey, then 37, coaching a summer-league game.

Karl offered Casey a job as an assistant coach, and his career took an upward trajectory.

He was in Seattle for 11 seasons before finally getting a chance to be a head coach in 2005, with the Minnesota Timberwolves. While in Minnesota, Casey developed a close relationship with superstar Kevin Garnett, but was fired after going 53-69 in a season and a half.

He developed a reputation as a defensive mind. He was hired as an assistant with the Dallas Mavericks under former Pistons coach Rick Carlisle and was credited as the architect of a defense that limited LeBron James and the Miami Heat in the 2011 NBA Finals, a series the Mavericks won in six games.

James admitted the series forced him to improve.

“I wasn't that good of a player. … I wasn't a complete basketball player,” James told reporters last season when his then-team, the Cleveland Cavaliers, faced Casey’s Raptors in the playoffs. “Dwane Casey drew up a game plan to take away things I was good at and make me do things I wasn't very good at.

“He's part of the reason why I am who I am today.”

LeBron James on improvement since 2011 Finals: "I wasn't that good of a player... I wasn't a complete basketball player. Dwane Casey drew up a gameplan to take away things I was good at & make me do things I wasn't very good at. He's part of the reason why I am who I am today." pic.twitter.com/lcOSKZoqpw — Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) May 4, 2018

Casey’s schemes were celebrated, and while the Mavericks' championship celebration was ongoing, Carlisle was on the phone to recommend Casey for the Raptors job.

Run in Toronto ends

The Raptors, a newer NBA franchise, hadn't experienced much success. They went 23-43 in lockout-shortened 2011-12, Casey's first season.

DeMar DeRozan, now a four-time All-Star, was in his second season with the franchise, and point guard Kyle Lowry wouldn't arrive until the next season.

Fueled by Lowry and DeRozan, the Raptors slowly climbed the ladder in the Eastern Conference. They won 56 games in 2015-16 before falling to James and the Cavaliers in six games in the Eastern Conference finals.

Last season, the Raptors roared to a franchise-record 59 victories and earned the Eastern Conference's top seed.

Casey was named NBA coach of the year because of the success.

Then, he lost his job.

After the dominant regular season, the Raptors barely survived an upset against the eighth-seeded Washington Wizards in the first round of the playoffs, beating them in seven games.

In the next round, James and the Cavaliers took a 2-0 series lead on the Raptors’ home floor. And though the Raptors battled back from a 17-point deficit to tie Game 3 at Cleveland with eight seconds remaining, James dribbled the length of the floor and nailed a running bank shot at the buzzer, effectively ending Casey’s seven-season tenure with the Raptors.

Casey had to deal with more than the loss.

He had benched DeMar DeRozan for the final 14 minutes, a move that bothered the Raptors star. The media questioned the decision, despite DeRozan not playing well and reserves fueling the Raptors' futile comeback attempt.

But months later, after being traded to the San Antonio Spurs, DeRozan said there was no way he could remain angry.

“One thing about Case, he’s going to have an analogy for something,” DeRozan said with a grin after the Pistons’ preseason loss at San Antonio on Oct.5. “He just gave me nothing but positive words.

“You get into it with your father, somebody close to you. You have disagreements or something. Once it’s talked about, you can’t be mad. That’s what type of relationship we always had. Nothing was never personal. Everything was out of love, whether it was a mistake or anything. That’s how it was handled. We talked about it and moved on from it.”

Things were tense after the Game 3 loss.

Raptors president Masai Ujiri confronted Casey, Sportsnet’s Michael Granger reported, and multiple sources have confirmed the account to the Free Press.

The Cavs eliminated the Raptors in Game 4 by 35 points.

It was the third straight season the Cavs ended the Raptors' playoff run.

Casey’s fate was sealed, and he was fired four days later.

Enter the Pistons

Casey was determined to take a year off before returning to coaching.

A TV opportunity was on the table from ESPN, and the chance to spend time with his wife, Brenda, and his two children was enticing.

But shortly before Casey’s firing, the Pistons decided to part ways with president and coach Stan Van Gundy.

The timing worked for the Pistons, but Casey needed convincing.

It helped that the Pistons hired Ed Stefanski to run the front office. The two men had a relationship from when Stefanski was an executive with the Raptors.

Casey dazzled in his interview with Stefanski and other members of the search team.

“He commanded the room,” Stefanski said. “What you want is a presence with the players. The other applicants did a good job, but (Casey), having won on the level he’s won, was very, very important to us and the team we have right now.”

Casey still wasn’t convinced.

He was noncommittal while appearing on ESPN programs on June 8.

Gores unleashed a full-court press.

He wanted to fly Casey and his wife to L.A., which wasn’t possible since Casey's kids were still in school. Gores arranged a teleconference, and he sold Casey and his wife on his vision.

“He’s real,” Casey said of Gores. “He tells you what he thinks. If you don’t want to know what he thinks, don’t ask him.

“He might fire me tomorrow, but the fact is he genuinely cares about you. You’re not just there for him to look at you as an asset. That’s so important for him and that’s the feeling I got from him.”

The roster was also appealing because it included All-Star talent in Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond.

“Stan had laid the groundwork of a good team with that group,” said Casey, who became the 36th coach in franchise history. “They just weren’t healthy, so it wasn’t like you were starting from the bottom, starting from scratch.”

Never forget

Casey is enjoying a honeymoon with his new players.

Van Gundy’s grating coaching style had worn thin, and players have responded positively to Casey’s positive outlook.

It won’t last.

Playing time is often a landmine to player-coach relationships.

The first five-game losing skid also could cause doubt.

But when you consider Casey’s life, you begin to understand why he doesn’t worry about those decisions. And it's not just because he is paid quite handsomely ($7 million per year, on average).

He has come so far from his youth, when he encountered racism daily.

From that segregated past, he grew up to marry a white woman, a marriage that has resulted in two children.

As much as Casey is open about the troubles, he is just as open about the positive aspects of his upbringing and the many white men who played a role.

He is looking forward to the day when his kids — a daughter, 10, and a son, 7 — can truly understand his life’s journey.

“Good teachers, a lot of good families that sent their white kids to school with good intentions it wasn’t all that, but those were the things I remember as a young kid growing,” Casey said. “I’m prayerful and blessed and humbled that my kids never have to go through that growing up in today’s society.”

And that might be the No.1 takeaway from Casey’s life.

These are turbulent times. A time of political polarization.

But Casey remembers times even more turbulent.

And he remains hopeful.

“Let’s not let today’s atmosphere, politics, the things that we’re going through in our country right now, the division, divide us back into those days because we never want to see those days again,” Casey said.

Follow Vince Ellis on Twitter @vincent_ellis56.