The following is part of Raptors Republic’s series of pieces previewing the season for the Toronto Raptors. You can find all the pieces in the series here.
The Toronto Raptor facing the most pressure this season isn’t Scottie Barnes. It’s not oft-injured-and-looking-to-return-to-All-Stardom Brandon Ingram. It’s no young player or old vet.
It’s Darko Rajakovic. The Head Coach of the Raptors has enjoyed two seasons at the helm, his first two as a head coach in the NBA. He has faced arguably as large a split as I’ve ever seen on coaching analysis when it comes to media versus the fanbase. Media members — myself included — largely praise him and consider him a solid infrastructural coach with a locker room that loves him. Fans — and I’m basing this anecdotally on reading fan voices, including on this website — focus more on late-game blunders and the overall win-loss record. So is he a gem waiting to blossom now that the team is ready to win? Or is he not yet ready for the big leagues?
One of those sides is about to be proven right.
Through two seasons, Rajakovic has suffered 109 losses to only 55 wins. That’s the fourth–worst of any team over that stretch, behind only the pitiful Utah Jazz, Charlotte Hornets, and Washington Wizards. The offence has been especially putrid, with the fifth-worst offensive rating over the same stretch. There has really not been any consistent area of success, no lineup that has driven good offence, no pet play (skip the 77 got sniffed out pretty fast), no court orientation that has consistently been able to score on first chances in the half-court.
And yet Rajakovic himself was billed as an offensive coach coming into his tenure in Toronto. (When I asked him about his actual orientation, he called himself a defensive coach who knows a little bit about offence.)
To be fair, he has instituted a pass-happy offence that has ranked fifth in assists despite all those empty offensive possessions. And despite the dearth of shooting and self-creation, Rajakovic has managed to cobble together an offence based on bodies and balls flying every which way, as well as passes that by and large move towards the basket. Toronto has consistently been near the top of the league in expected efficiency (based on shot location and quality) under Rajakovic. But the quality of the actual shooters taking those shots has been so poor that it hasn’t mattered. (Which, to be perhaps unfair, may be why those shots were open in the first place.)
All this to say: We’re about to find out if Rakanovic’s modern offensive principles will work now that the Raptors have cobbled together its best offensive group of players Rajakovic has seen. They haven’t to this point. But there’s plenty of reason to hope that they will going forward.
Defensively, even though Toronto spent approximately 75 percent of Rajakovic’s tenure stinking up the joint, things changed dramatically towards the back half of last season. You’ve read the stat, but here it is again: The Raptors enjoyed the second-best defence in the league after the All-Star break in 2024-25. That stretch coincided with the offloading of one of the team’s best defensive performers, Davion Mitchell. Yet somehow the team improved dramatically after its best guard defender found a new home in Miami.
Rajakovic’s high-pickup-point defence did wonders complementing Barnes as a roamer, helper, and rim protector. He was able to manifest success on that end as almost the team’s only positive defender. (Although Jakob Poeltl settled into a solid season on that end after an up-and-down start to the year.) Was that because Barnes was so uniquely talented? Maybe. But Rajakovic’s principles finally started yielding fruit, too. If you watched the Summer League Raptors unleashing hell with Collin Murray-Boyles, Jamal Shead, and others terrorizing opponents across the full length of the court, you would have been forgiven if you thought it was the championship Oklahoma City Thunder out there.
With Ingram bringing a huge amount of length at the wing spot, and Murray-Boyles ready to step in as a defensive monster, the Raptors should be better defensively this upcoming season. Sure, the second-ranked defence in the league over 27 games coincided with a stretch of games largely against bad teams resting their best players and trying to lose games. (Just like the Raptors themselves.) But the defensive infrastructure was real. Perhaps not top-of-the-league real. But very solid nonetheless.
All signs point to the Raptors being ready on both ends of the court. Ingram will give Toronto, finally, a player who can create for himself in the middle of the floor and while heading towards the rim. He will step in as one of the team’s best shooters when he doesn’t have the ball in his hands. If Immanuel Quickley and Gradey Dick can stay healthy and passable defensively, there will be a boatload more shooting available through the stretch of the season.
If things don’t go right, Rajakovic will likely be the first person whose head will hit the chopping block. Expected efficiency doesn’t pay rent. Ball movement doesn’t put meat on the table. Points are, ultimately, what dictate job security. Both for and against. And even as Rajakovic has built the infrastructure for real success, there still needs to be, you know, real success. And soon.
For my money, I am confident that in the big picture Rajakovic has done everything right. I have argued as much many times. Toronto’s systems on both ends are, to my eyes, based on principles that catalyze strengths and overcome (as much as has been possible) weaknesses. That’s the mark of good coaching. And, yes, Rajakovic has committed some blatant late-game errors, such as in an Oct. 28 game against the Denver Nuggets when Rajakovic chose not to call a timeout late — and saw his team fail to find a good look on a chance to win.
Those problems have been real. But they don’t outweigh the positives, not by a long shot. New coaches (or, new to head coaching in the NBA) have growing pains. But far more important has been an oft-underacknowleged component of Rajakovic’s tenure: the team seems to really love him. The players seem to really enjoy each other, too! That’s not nothing. For Rajakovic to keep his locker room together, to keep his players trying — hard! — on defence, to keep the trust of his star, despite his relative inexperience and the miserable scoring and the piles of losses, that’s real leadership. The team never lost its summer-camp atmosphere. That is a tally in Rajakovic’s ledger perhaps even more significant than expected efficiency.
And that, too, is about to be put to the test this upcoming season. The team can stick together through the losses when it’s supposed to lose. Now it’s expecting to win. Sticking together in a cold, forgettable January when the team loses three in a row will be much more difficult. I think Rajakovic is up to it. But I understand why many think he’s not.
We’re all about to find out. Rajakovic is in many ways a microcosm of the team itself. He has spent two seasons preparing, laying the groundwork. Now it’s time for him to make good on those promises. What’s about to happen will matter far, far more than what took place over the previous two seasons.
