Toronto Raptors coach Dwane Casey visits Seahawks coach Pete Carroll every year before heading back to Toronto. "This is kind of like my last hurrah," Casey said.
RENTON — Dwane Casey, the Toronto Raptors coach (and neighbor of Seahawks punter Jon Ryan), made his annual trip to the Seahawks, one of his last stops before heading back to the Raptors.
“This is kind of my last hurrah before I go back,” Casey said on Tuesday. “I’m getting juiced up by being around coach (Pete) Carroll and the team. Just getting into the competitive mode. You come to practice here and you feel the competitive juices, the music, just the way Coach teaches and motivates.”
Casey held a copy of a book titled, “The Inner Game of Tennis,” a favorite of Carroll’s. In his own book, Carroll called the book’s concepts “the most influential” in his coaching career.
“The essence of the Inner Game is to acquire and maintain a ‘quieted mind,’ which may then allow an athlete to perform at his or her highest level,” Carroll wrote. “Most of my coaching has revolved around enabling players and teams to achieve this state of mind.”
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Said Casey, “He gave it to me so I’m going to try to steal something from different and try to take it back and hopefully it will be rub off because it did last year. And on top of all of that, I’m a Seahawks fan.”
Casey said the most unique aspect about the Seahawks is the “competitive culture” Carroll and general manager John Schneider have created. This was Casey’s fourth or fifth visit.
“One thing that he and John have done a great job of is put together a collective group of self-starters,” Casey said. “That’s easier said than done. You go out and get a Kam Chancellor, a Russell Wilson, a Tyler Lockett. I was sitting in Coach’s office and I looked out and the first kid on the field was Tyler Lockett. Here’s a kid who’s a self-made player, and he was the first one on the field. You can’t teach that. But they’ve done a good job as an organization, as a culture, of building that.”
“Older players teaching the younger players,” he added. “Just the raw enthusiasm that they work with, the pace that they work with. That’s the culture you want as a coach. We try to generate that, and we do a decent job of it and have done it over the years of creating that atmosphere.”
Casey is coming off his most successful season as the Raptors’ coach. Toronto made the Eastern Conference Finals before losing to eventual champion Cleveland in six games.
Casey said his team’s challenge is dealing with those increased expectations, something Carroll is familiar with.
“Those are things you can kind of pick up,” Casey said. “That’s what he’s done a great job of here: repeating, success. And hopefully that can rub off on me and I can take that back with me to Toronto.”