Darko Rajaković's soft skills are excellent, but can he nail the hard choices?

New York Times

16-04-2025

TORONTO — Do not confuse a person who has mastered 'soft' skills with a 'soft' person. In fact, knowing how to communicate effectively with a disparate group of people requires, on occasion, being acerbic or even aggressive.
'We were in a timeout and he really chewed me out in front of everybody,' Toronto Raptors rookie Ja'Kobe Walter said Monday of one late-season moment with head coach Darko Rajaković. Several players were chatting with the media after the end of a 30-52 season. 'He was saying I was being weak on the court. I wasn't being aggressive just because I got one shot blocked. He was saying I was soft. And then in that moment, it kind of turned me up. He saw that I went out there and I started playing defence crazy and all that. When he chews me out, he knows that it kind of lights a fire under me.'
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It would be easy to see and listen to the mild-mannered, optimistic Raptors head coach, especially with the way he presents himself in front of cameras, and mistake him for a young coach who is afraid to rankle NBA talent. While he certainly doesn't have ex-Raptors coach Nick Nurse's penchant for criticizing specific players in public, the 'nice guy' perception is off. Sure, Rajaković cares about his players and will make uncommon gestures to let them know that. He will also light them up privately or in a team setting.
'Accountability is nothing else than the belief that the person can go to another level, that they can achieve something bigger and better,' Rajaković said on Tuesday.
It's a mantra fit to put on a poster in an office, right next to the 'hang in there' kitty.
However you define them, through two seasons, it is clear Rajaković has nailed the art of using soft skills to get through to his players. As demonstrated by the Raptors' defensive growth through the season, a clear offensive stylistic shift that has yet to produce results or the way his players talk about him, Rajaković's messages have resonated with the team.
October 2025 will bring the tougher part: getting a flawed team with raised expectations to not just play cohesively but to play well. The Raptors' era of good feelings is coming to an end, soon to be replaced by the pressure to turn incremental growth into a significant leap in wins.
For all the positivity, much of it justified, from this past season — a five-win jump from last year, the encouraging development of a quartet of rookies and a massive defensive improvement — there is still a question about how real any of it was. The Raptors feasted on a weak schedule down the stretch. They are the only team in the league that didn't win a single game on the road against an opponent that finished better than .500. They went 16-3 against the six teams that finished with a worse record than them and 14-49 against the 23 other teams.
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With the addition of Brandon Ingram to a young core of players, there will be expectations for the Raptors to improve next season as older teams presumably fade. Whether that means making the top half of the Play-In or the top six will depend a lot on how the offseason goes, including what happens to the Raptors on the evening of the draft lottery.
Unlike some other potentially ascendant teams in the Eastern Conference, the Raptors are not likely to have much flexibility to alter their roster this summer beyond the draft. They will be in a delicate dance with the luxury tax threshold. That doesn't have to be solved before next year's games begin, but it rules out a significant expenditure on out-of-organization talent. Barring a trade, the Raptors' roster will look familiar.
As it happens, the Raptors finished 26th in offensive rating this year. They were not efficient in transition, but they ranked fifth in total points per game in transition, which means their half-court offence was largely a mess. With none of Barnes, Ingram or RJ Barrett likely to launch 3s at high frequency, the intricacy with which the Raptors must execute will have to be pinpoint.
'For me, the most important thing is going to be that we really need to make quick decisions,' Rajaković said. 'We cannot be holding the ball. We need to be making simple decisions and simple reads.'
Barnes and Barrett have already bought in, while Ingram's last few years have been disappointing enough that he should be open to re-examining his game. He has at least averaged 4.9 assists per game in each of the last five seasons, so Ingram is not in any way a selfish player. He does tend to hold the ball, and that is something Rajaković is going to have to coach out of him.
With wins and losses essentially incidental over the last season and a half, it has been difficult to judge Rajaković's in-game abilities. Their lineups were all over the place this year, thanks to meaningful injuries to nearly every player on the roster, including Ingram, who didn't play a game after his February trade to Toronto. Anecdotally, Rajaković seemed to be solid at creating open looks for his offensively deficient team when coming out of timeouts. And he is aggressive at using timeouts, even early in the game.
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How that translates to a team that is really trying to win games instead of benching its best players with eight minutes left remains to be seen.
'I understand what coaches need to be successful. And he has all those attributes: the will to win, the time you have to spend in trying to be prepared,' Raptors guard Immanuel Quickley said. 'He's a step ahead of the game. He allows the players to lead the team as far as asking questions during the film (sessions). … He does a lot of little stuff. But I think also just like the in-game adjustments, he's really good at that.'
'I don't know if you guys have seen Darko's (after-timeout plays),' Barrett added, 'but (we) get a wide-open shot or we score every single time.'
Rajaković's ability to keep the team together as they put together a disastrous first half of the season should be commended and appreciated. Real expectations, though, result in more pressure, and more angst when losses mount. If the Raptors are healthy, not every player who made a good impression this year will be able to play regularly.
What if Rajaković decides it doesn't make sense to start all three of Barnes, Barrett and Ingram, preferring a low-usage glue guy to hold the first five together? Ochai Agbaji and Walter both had encouraging years, while Gradey Dick is just two seasons removed from being a lottery pick; there might not be room for all three in the rotation.
With a core of young players who want to start winning, what happens if the Raptors hit on their draft pick, either in the top four or in the middle of the lottery, and need to mix that player's needs with that of the team's? None of those are simple scenarios, and none of them have been Rajaković's concern since the Raptors traded OG Anunoby and Pascal Siakam in the middle of 2023-24.
'I want to have that problem,' Rajaković said. '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.
'If I wanted to keep people happy, I would be selling ice cream. I would not be a basketball coach.'