Raptors’ Rajakovic ready to lead next phase with pressure set to rise
Next season, a lot could change — and should — if the Raptors are going to take the proverbial next step and compete for a playoff spot.
TORONTO — Working for the Raptors has been a nice gig lately: the pay is good, and the process is valued over results. As long as you show up for work, are diligent when you’re there and play hard, everyone is happy.
And due to an emphasis on development and a steady stream of injuries, playing time — the NBA’s ultimate mood enhancer — has been plentiful this past season. Of the 14 players on the roster at the season’s end, none averaged less than 17 minutes a game and none more than 32.8 minutes. There were starts for everyone, especially down the stretch, as the regular starters only played every other game.
The team had two goals: development and managing their lottery odds, and they achieved both.
But next season, a lot could change — and should — if the Raptors are going to take the proverbial next step and compete for a playoff spot. There will be more external pressure in the form of expectations to win more games, and more internal pressure as playing time and roster spots will automatically become more competitive. Adding a healthy Brandon Ingram to the mix will see to that, as will a top lottery pick.
Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic has cultivated strong personal relationships with his players over the past two seasons, and it’s worked. The bonds developed give every impression of being real.
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“I think everybody recognizes the personality, the humility, and just being a personable coach. Somebody that you can talk to outside of basketball,” Immanuel Quickley said at his end-of-season media availability this week. “That’s really where it starts. When you talk about a coach or even players or just trust, you want somebody that has your back outside of basketball first, and then once you know that, you’ll do anything for them on the court. I think that’s one of the things that makes him different.”
RJ Barrett echoed those sentiments. Perhaps not surprisingly, since Rajakovic helped each of Barrett and Quickley through painful personal losses last season and has invested significantly in them professionally during their first full seasons playing in Toronto after being acquired mid-season from New York.
“He’s a really good coach. He cares about us. He really does,” Barrett said. “He comes in and he challenges us every single day. And it’s nice when you know that you have somebody that cares about you — makes you want to play even harder for them. Darko’s a guy you can have conversations with about anything, and he’s very helpful. Always teaching, but he listens to us and our ideas. Yeah. So, like, that stuff is great.”
But it stands to reason that some of those relationships could get tested going forward. Not everyone is going to get their 20 or so minutes a game or opportunities to start or even play regularly. The Raptors should have more quality players on their roster next season, but the game remains just 48 minutes long. It also stands to reason that keeping an NBA team humming along cohesively in those circumstances will be a different task.
Turns out Rajakovic is here for that too.
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“If I wanted to keep people happy, I would be selling ice cream. I would not be a basketball coach. My job is not to keep people happy, my job is to keep people accountable, to help them to grow, to put them in a position to be successful,” Rajakovic said on Tuesday at his end-of-season media availability. “With that being said, I cannot play 15 players every single day, every single night in a game.
“Competition? They are going to fight with it, they’ve got to stay ready. You might be playing one night, you might be playing 10 minutes or 15 minutes, are you going to be a good teammate?
“All of those things come down to work that guys put in. I want to have that problem, I want to have guys available, I want to have great players on the team, I want to be facing those decisions. I am not shying away from that.”
When Rajakovic was hired, he made a pledge: he would coach the whole person, not just the player on the court and in uniform.
It’s an approach he believes in fiercely. He attends funerals, hosts dinners, and finds any opportunity to spend time with players one-on-one and bring them together away from the court.
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His belief is that those gestures, efforts and moments, applied consistently over time, will allow him to coach his players harder and demand more from them.
“The NBA season is a long season and there is a lot going on, there’s a lot of ups and downs. There is a lot of honest conversations that you gotta have with players, and obviously, you want to be positive and upbeat and point out things that they’re doing well,” he said. “But my job as a coach — as a leader — is also to address things that the team or individual needs to do better, you know?
“So if you have personal investment in somebody, and you take time to spend one-on-one with that person on the court and off the court and go grab a lunch or a dinner, you know, they’re going to be much more open to listen when you’re addressing those, call it negative things, but things that they need to improve on, our team needs to improve on.
“To give an example: we were on the road, we did not play well in the first half. I forgot which game it was, and I jumped on Scottie Barnes. It was not his fault. He was just fine in the first half, but I jumped on him that he needs to be better, that he needs to do more. He’s looking at me like I’m crazy, and everybody else is looking at me like I’m crazy.
“But instead of him like asking, ‘What did I do or didn’t do?’ he said, ‘My bad coach, I gotta be better.’ And he went over there and played much harder in the second half, even harder. And it got the whole team playing much better in the second half. So I think having those moments, it’s very important … I think there was a lot of things that we did that paid off, to create better chemistry on the team and more trust on the team.”
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But no one is shying away from the idea that next season will be much different. To a man, the players believe they’re ready to turn the corner and be a playoff team a season from now. The organization is certainly spending money accordingly — the average salary of their projected starting lineup next season will be $31.3 million, and the team could face challenges staying under the luxury tax. Teams in the snack bracket are expected to win a lot more than 30 games.
Rajakovic is one more voice to the chorus. “I think it was a good season for us, Year 1 of the rebuild,” he said. “Now it’s time for the next chapter, and it’s time for us to take the next step.”
The challenge will be taking that step and maintaining the positive atmosphere that has enveloped the team, their record aside.
Rajakovic had done a commendable job of building a culture based on strong relationships so far in his tenure, but if everything works out as he and his players and the organization hope, next season could be a more complicated task.
