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New York Times
16-04-2025
- Sport
- New York Times
Darko Rajaković's soft skills are excellent, but can he nail the hard choices?
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.' Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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. Advertisement 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.'
Yahoo
05-03-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Too good to fail: Why the Toronto Raptors can't tank properly
There are two factions of Toronto Raptors fans right now: Those who loved Tuesday night's win at Orlando on Ja'Kobe Walter's absurd three-pointer with 0.5 seconds remaining and those that hated the outcome because of how it impacts the standings. Well, both sides need to get used to what played out because similar things are going to continue to happen. OK, we don't expect Walter to hit another one of those step-back miracles, but this Raptors team is going to win a good chunk of the remaining 20 games — even if that's not what the front office, or Raptors Tank Nation wants. Toronto did everything possible to increase its odds of losing Tuesday. Immanuel Quickley was only given just over two minutes of playing time in the final quarter, while Jakob Poeltl and Scottie Barnes had around four apiece. Canadian AJ Lawson, who has only 64 NBA games over three seasons, played the full quarter (and had a great game, we might add). The Raptors will continue to rest Poeltl, keep Quickley's workload under control and maybe even cut down on star player Barnes' time, too. The team's best offensive player, Brandon Ingram, recently acquired from New Orleans, might only play in the final two weeks or so of the season — if at all — as he and the team patiently rehab his ankle injury. Even so, it's going to be awfully tough for the Raptors to finish the year with the league's fifth- or sixth-worst record, gaining them better odds in the draft lottery. To recap: Duke's Cooper Flagg is seen as a generational player at the top of this coming draft. Rutgers stars Dylan Harper and Ace Bailey also are regarded as potential all-stars who would go first in many other drafts (ones without a Flagg or Victor Wembanyama at the top), and Baylor's V.J. Edgecombe is a spectacular athlete who is heating up as a shooter, giving vibes similar to Anthony Edwards, Vince Carter and Jason Richardson. There are other interesting prospects behind that foursome, but many teams will be jockeying hard for a better chance at landing one of those four. Nobody is catching Washington (who Toronto hosts twice in the next week) or Charlotte or Utah (Friday's opponent) at the bottom. They each will have 52.1% odds of drafting in the Top 4 and 14% odds of winning the right to draft Flagg first. Those teams have far less talent than the Raptors and the Jazz even improves its odds nightly by often holding standout young centre Walker Kessler out in a bit of a shameless tanking move that the league looks the other way on. New Orleans, fourth-worst right now, is three games behind the Raptors and, though loaded with some talent, doesn't have as much as Toronto, either. To make things worse for the Raptors, Philadelphia and Brooklyn are both only 1.5 games up on Toronto right now. Brooklyn overachieved early under former Canadian national team head coach Jordi Fernandez, but badly wants in on the Flagg and Co. sweepstakes — the franchise even traded a boatload of its own picks and pick-swap options last summer to regain control of its 2025 and 2026 first-rounders back from Houston, clearly planning to be as bad as possible this year and next. So, the Nets likely will do everything legally possible to be in that mix. Meanwhile, Philadelphia — which. along with Phoenix, are the NBA's biggest disappointments this season — has shut down former MVP Joel Embiid and knows winning even one playoff round will be a tall order. The team owes Oklahoma City its first-round pick unless the pick lands in the Top 6. Meaning you can expect the Sixers to now do everything possible to keep sinking like a stone, even if the odds are better that Oklahoma City will come away with the 7-10 pick next June than the Sixers move up and keep it. Just last year, the Raptors were in a similar situation, needing to stay in the Top 7 to keep their pick. Toronto dropped to eighth at the lottery and the pick went to San Antonio to complete the Poeltl trade (the Spurs moved it again to Minnesota). The Raptors came out OK despite losing the pick, nabbing Walter at 19, along with Jonathan Mogbo and Jamal Shead later in the draft, plus prospect Ulrich Chomche and undrafted free agent Jamison Battle. Right now, Toronto stands fifth-worst in the standings, with a 42.1% shot of drafting in the Top 4. Dropping to sixth- or seventh-worst means 34.8% or 34.5% odds, eighth would be 26.3% and ninth 20.3%. Toronto probably can't fall further than that, with Chicago four wins ahead and San Antonio at seven. Our guess is Toronto ends up seventh-worst. New Orleans won the Zion Williamson lottery from that spot in 2019 and Toronto jumped from 7 to 4 in 2021, ending up with Barnes instead of others high on the team's board like Franz Wagner and Jonathan Kuminga. Raptors report cards: Underwhelming work done so far Raptors nearly blow it spectacularly again, but survive in Orlando Atlanta won last year's lottery with just 11.7% odds of moving into the Top 4 (and 2.5% of picking first) and the team with the worst record hasn't won the lottery since the system was adjusted several years ago, but a team with 14% odds of winning (ie. a bottom 3 record) has selected first in each draft from 2020-23. But past results don't mean anything where lottery probability is concerned (just because Detroit dropped to fifth three years in a row doesn't mean something like that will happen again. Each coin flip, or in this case lottery draw, is an independent event). The worse Toronto finishes, the better its chances at Flagg or one of the other top prospects. But given the approach of the other teams mentioned and the fact the Raptors have by far the easiest remaining schedule of anybody. The 20 teams Toronto still has to play have a combined winning percentage of only .358, per nobody else faces opponents with a combined winning percentage under .436. That means that even if the starters get rested for quarters or full games, Toronto still is too good to fail compared to its opponents. @WolstatSun
