AUBURN HILLS, MICH.—As places of banishment go, Dwane Casey’s office at the Detroit Pistons’ suburban practice facility isn’t exactly a bleak island of despair. The place is huge, spacious enough to house a boardroom table alongside the head coach’s desk. And everywhere you look is a conversation starter. There’s a framed photo of Casey with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and another of Casey with Drake. And there’s one, too, of Casey with Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan.

“We had dinner in San Antonio earlier this month,” Casey was saying, speaking of DeRozan. “Had a great time with DeMar and his fiancée and their two beautiful daughters. Caught up on old times. Lot of laughs. Little bit of crying.”

If Casey and DeRozan could commiserate over their common status as unwilling exiles from Masai Ujiri’s cutthroat northern kingdom, Casey, in an interview this week, hardly sounded like some embittered veteran of the NBA grind. Now five months removed from his Toronto firing, and four months into his tenure with the Pistons, he can make the case he’s in the best situation of a career that’s seen him walk an NBA sideline for 860 games as a head coach and a thousand-plus more as an assistant. Casey, 61, has never before enjoyed a contract as long or as lucrative as the five-year deal worth about $7 million U.S. a season he signed with the Pistons in June, a couple of weeks before he was handed the Red Auerbach Trophy as the NBA’s coach of the year for his work in a 59-win season in Toronto.

And while Casey said the move to Michigan hasn’t been easy on his wife and two school-aged children, all of whom had grown to love the GTA, the circumstance has allowed the family to lay down roots. The Caseys recently bought a house in the Detroit suburbs. In Toronto, despite seven seasons of success that turned Casey into the greatest coach in franchise history, the family stuck to leasing in Summerhill.

“(In Toronto) I was always on a two-year deal, or another year to go, so we never bought,” Casey said. “I was always on that short leash.”

Now in charge of a Pistons team that’s missed the playoffs eight of the past nine seasons but figures to be on the upswing without the burden of outsize expectations, Casey said the change of scenery has come with other upsides.

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“(Predecessor) Stan Van Gundy laid an excellent foundation here as a coach. So it’s not like you’re at the bottom. We’re not at the top. But we’re in the mix,” Casey said. “And that’s a good place to be because you can come in and put your stamp on it.”

Along with inheriting a roster that includes Blake Griffin, Andre Drummond and Reggie Jackson, Casey has been reunited with ex-Raptor point guard Jose Calderon, a 37-year-old alumnus of Casey’s sub-.500 early days in Toronto. (“We talk about the old times and laugh,” Casey said of Calderon.) The coach said he’s also in near-daily contact with Pistons owner Tom Gores, a Beverly Hills billionaire who’s deeply involved in the operation.

“That kind of respect and relationship (with an owner) is good to have. Hopefully you develop an understanding that it takes time to build, that you’re not going to just flip a switch,” Casey said. “But I’m just energized, just excited. Got a chip on my shoulder to let people know you still can coach, that you weren’t the problem, you weren’t the reason we didn’t make the NBA finals (in Toronto).”

Not that there aren’t regrets. The Raptors, Casey will tell you, should have done better than fall to LeBron James and the Cavaliers in a second-round sweep last spring. Game 1 should have been theirs. Ditto Game 3, after which Ujiri unleashed a torrent of rage on the coaching staff that foreshadowed Casey’s eventual doom. But James represented the East in the NBA final eight straight years. And despite the long list of opposing coaches fired for the sin of losing to him, it’s safe to say the alleged inadequacy of the opponents’ game plan will not go down as the root of LeBron’s greatness.

“You tip your hat to those (James-led) teams,” Casey said. “The one thing I can do: I can hold my head high with what we put together. What the players put together, what the organization put together, what the ownership put together — it’s left in a good place. Whoever takes the credit for it, I don’t care. But it’s a culmination of a lot of years put together.”

Still, the cruel truth is that Casey, for all his toil, won’t be around to see the franchise through its promising season in its history, with James gone West and Kawhi Leonard come North and nothing but tantalizing possibility on the horizon.

“They did a good job this year bringing in Kawhi Leonard, who’s a top-three, top-four player in the league. That’s something you dream of,” Casey said.

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Not that the coach would have easily endorsed the trade that sent DeRozan and other assets to San Antonio in return for Leonard and Danny Green.

“I love DeMar. I would have fought for DeMar,” Casey said. “But Kawhi is a top player.”

Has Casey, in the days since Ujiri took the big swing, allowed himself to ponder how he’d be handling the new-look Raptors, or how the old-look Raptors might fare in an LeBron-less East?

“It’s the last thing on my mind,” the coach said.

And now that a reporter has made it top of mind?

“You wonder what would have happened. What if?” Casey said. “But what’s the old saying? If ifs and buts were candies and nuts we’d all have a merry Christmas. That’s water under the bridge now.”

Which is not to say all parties have made peace. In the days after Casey was fired, he said he was inundated with messages of support from members of the NBA community. But one notable voice was silent. Nick Nurse, Casey’s five-year assistant who would eventually be hired as Casey’s successor, did not reach out. Nurse has acknowledged as much in interviews. The chill between the former colleagues is as palpable as it appears mutual.

“That’s his prerogative,” Casey said of Nurse. “The only thing that hurts — and I’m not hurt, I’m a big boy, but the only thing you think about: When we hired (Nurse) in Toronto, he had never had an NBA interview … We brought him aboard. But it is what it is. This is the NBA. Don’t cry for me. If they feel like he’s the guy for the job, so be it. If I was the problem after building the program for seven years, so be it. That’s Ujiri’s decision.”

Casey smiles and shakes his head. He wants it made clear he’s not wallowing in bitterness. He’s simply responding to a persistent line of questioning by recounting a few facts. Life is good, he says, and life goes on. And hey, the season’s finally upon us. He’ll be going back to Toronto with the Pistons for a game Nov. 14.

“It’ll be emotional,” Casey said. “It’ll be good to see friends, see people you haven’t seen in a while. I’m sure it’ll be different to be on the other end (of the arena), although I’ve been there before as an assistant. But it’ll be good. It’s nothing but good. All good, all the time. I haven’t spent a minute (thinking), ‘Whoa, I wish I was back in Toronto’ or ‘They did me wrong.’ Because there’s so many great things going on here that I’m excited about. I’m in a good spot. I landed well here.”

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