A small question about Dragon and Spell Passives

Several, several patches ago, after level 1 pantheon could solo dragon, Riot changed the way Dragon auto attacks. They changed it to a cone, and I distinctly remember reading that it was considered a spell. There are two points that I want to bring up about this:

Number 1 is the fact that Kassadin's E passive says that it gains charges based on spells cast in the vicinity, but doesn't count the attacks.

Number 2 is more having to do with Mordekaiser's ghost dragon. The Ghost Dragon can be a target of many champion specific abilities, such as the 3 stack devour for TK, and Morde's W. If the dragon is technically coded as a creep and a champion, shouldn't the attacks stack with Kassadin AND Maokai, since Maokai needs a nearby champion?