Rashad McCants says he could’ve won ROTY but had a coach who was ‘shaking in the motherf——g huddle’

Former NBA guard Rashad McCants was drafted by the Minnesota Timberwolves with the last lottery pick of the 2005 NBA Draft, and he got his pro career off on the right foot with a solid rookie season.

McCants suited up in 79 games in the 2005-06 campaign and averaged 7.9 points, 1.8 rebounds and 0.8 assists per game. He shot 45.0 percent from the field and 37.2 percent from deep as a first-year player to boot.

However, McCants thinks that he could have reached greater heights as a rookie if someone different had led the team. He implied that if Dwane Casey hadn’t been his head coach in his maiden campaign, he could have captured that season’s Rookie of the Year award.

While he no longer holds a head-coaching role in the league, Casey earned his place as a staple in the league’s head-coaching ranks over the course of many seasons.

His most successful stint in that role came when he spent seven seasons as the head coach of the Toronto Raptors. Toronto enjoyed some of its most successful campaigns in franchise history under his leadership. For example, he coached the Raptors to an appearance in the 2016 Eastern Conference Finals.

Though a young McCants maybe would have benefited from being coached by someone more experienced than Casey at the time, it’s hard to imagine he would have had such a better rookie season that he would have won the award. After all, none other than legendary point guard Chris Paul captured the hardware, and he won the race in a landslide.

For comparison, Paul received a whopping 124 first-place votes to win Rookie of the Year, and no other player earned more than one. Former Utah Jazz floor general Deron Williams got the one other vote.

Unlike Paul and Williams, McCants didn’t stick around in the NBA for all that long, either. He played just four seasons in the league, with his last NBA action coming back in the 2008-09 season.

All in all, there isn’t an overwhelming amount of evidence to back up McCants’ claim that he could have been crowned Rookie of the Year all those years ago with a different head coach, but it can’t be completely ruled out.