Try as I might, I can’t find a way to blame Dwane Casey for Jonas Valanciunas’ lack of production this season. He was a convenient scapegoat during all those years Valanciunas was in Toronto, enabling Valanciunas fans to direct their frustrations towards an external source rather than an internal source. Plus, it was just blatantly obvious that he hated Valanciunas and also all of Lithuania.
The only thing I can think of is that Casey still has respect among head coaches around the league and he told Taylor Jenkins that Valanciunas really sucks and to start him, but not play him big minutes. Jenkins, being a rookie coach, naively assumed that Casey had the Grizzlies’ best interests at heart and followed the advice even though Valanciunas should clearly be getting 30 minutes per game or more. That’s the only thing I can think of, and it’s a stretch. I’m just going to assume that’s what happened, though, so I can continue blaming Casey for stifling Valanciunas’ otherwise Hall-of-Fame-quality career.
I was sort of hoping that Valanciunas would score 20 this game, because 20 is a magical, talismanic number that kinda separates “pretty good” performances from “just average” performances. But he came up a bucket short after slowing way down in the first half, and I said screw it, I’m making a vid anyway. 9 buckets is a lot of buckets, actually, if you do the math, it’s mathematically the most possible buckets one can score while scoring 18 points. Run the figures for yourself if you want; you will find that my math skills are impeccable.