The Whiteboard: Dwane Casey extended, James Harden returns and Blazers on fire

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At 20-50, the Detroit Pistons have the second-worst record in the NBA and are sitting at the very bottom of the Eastern Conference. Nothing speaks to the current state of this organization’s rebuild from the ground up better, but as tempting as it’d be for general manager Troy Weaver to want to clean house entirely and install his own head coach, he’s doing no such thing.

As reported on Wednesday, the Pistons are extending coach Dwane Casey through the 2023-24 season. It’s not that big of an extension; Casey had two years left on his contract after this season, which means it’s only one extra year being tacked on here.

Still, it’s a vote of confidence in Casey’s ability to lead this young group into the future as Detroit attempts to rebuild through the draft. While the team’s record obviously doesn’t show it, the progress of youngsters like free-agent pickup Jerami Grant, reclamation project Josh Jackson and rookies Saddiq Bey and Isaiah Stewart shows signs of moving in the right direction.

Casey found similar success on the youth front during his time with the Toronto Raptors, and as the Pistons add a healthy Killian Hayes and more top-tier draft selections to the mix, that track record will be important. It seems odd to extend the coach of a 20-50 team, but his true value at the helm comes in the growth of Detroit’s young core, and that will take a few more years to properly evaluate.

The Beard is back

The soundbite sounds silly, but James Harden is right: He’s like, really, really good at this game. Nobody should be surprised it took him zero time in his first game since April 5 to find his groove.

In just 26 minutes off the bench Wednesday night, the Beard put up 18 points, 11 assists, 7 rebounds, 2 blocks and 2 steals. He shot 6-for-8 from the field, drilled three of his four triples and was throwing the type of Houdini-on-quaaludes passes he’s become known for.

Kyrie Irving didn’t play in the Brooklyn Nets‘ latest win, which has basically been the story of their season: This Big 3 is rarely on the floor all together at once. But when your Big 3 is Irving, Kevin Durant and this version of Harden, continuity honestly might not matter all that much, and the NBA should be quite afraid of the prospect of the Nets having all three superstars available for a playoff run now that Harden’s back.

Blazers streaking

With all the consternation over the race for the Western Conference’s 1-seed and trying to avoid the Los Angeles Lakers in the first round, it’s starting to feel like people are overlooking the roll the Portland Trail Blazers have been on. Rip City is nowhere near as intimidating as the defending champs in terms of first-round opponents, but whatever Damian Lillard, CJ McCollum and Norman Powell have discovered lately isn’t something any top-seeded team should be gunning for either.

The Blazers have won nine of their last 10 games in an effort to avoid the play-in games. They’re ranked first in offensive rating over that stretch, but more impressively, their usually porous defense has ranked 11th. The Blazers are riding a five-game win streak into Thursday’s road game against the Phoenix Suns, who have been wary of showing too much in recent lackluster showings against their other potential first-round matchups. If that’s the case again, this seemingly tough back-to-back may become easier than anticipated and the hot streak will keep on rolling.

Either way though, Portland seems to be catching fire at the right time, and although they haven’t clinched a top-six playoff spot just yet, they’re sitting pretty in fifth place in the West after Wednesday’s win in Utah. Nobody’s expecting this team to be a legitimate threat in the loaded West, but these Blazers aren’t first-round pushovers either.

Playoff updates

Heading into Thursday’s game against the streaking Blazers, the Suns are 1.5 games back from the 1-seed. A win would move them within one game, but Phoenix would still need to win out and see Utah to drop one of its remaining two games against the Sacramento Kings or Oklahoma City Thunder to sneak into the 1-seed via their head-to-head tiebreaker.

For the Jazz, if they win their last two games, if they go 1-1 and Phoenix loses a single game, or if Phoenix loses two games, they’re the No. 1 seed.

The Atlanta Hawks’ win moved them into the 4-seed in the East, but the Miami Heat (0.5 games back) and New York Knicks (0.5 games back) are hot on their heels. Thanks to the Boston Celtics’ loss to the lowly Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday, all three of those teams secured a top-six playoff berth, which guarantees the Celtics a spot in the play-in games.

The New Orleans Pelicans were eliminated from playoff contention with Wednesday’s loss, which means only the Chicago Bulls (2.5 games back from the 10th-place Washington Wizards) and the Sacramento Kings (2.0 games back from the 10th-place San Antonio Spurs) are the only teams on the outside looking in that haven’t been eliminated yet.

The Lakers’ narrow victory over the tanking Houston Rockets staved off a guaranteed appearance in the play-in game for now, but they’ll still need help from the Blazers and/or Dallas Mavericks to move into the top six.

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