Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic talks accountability, progress and championship hopes
'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.'
Article content
Darko Rajakovic brought a little bit of everything up to the podium with him Tuesday to conclude his second season as an NBA head coach: Passion, pride, humour and humility.
Confident in his abilities, but able to recognize there are things he can improve as his time as Toronto Raptors head coach enters a new phase, with expectations set to mount.
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic talks accountability, progress and championship hopes Back to video
While winning 30 games and developing a handful of rookies into NBA players were significant steps forward for the franchise, the players made it clear a day earlier that they are aiming for the playoffs next year and think they have the pieces to compete, even though the team’s rebuild is only a year and a half in.
Rajakovic agrees.
“Now it’s time for the next chapter and it’s time for us to take the next step,” he said. “How do we get there? We get there with doubling down on our habits, doubling down on our hard work, doubling down on believing in our young players and young core, and continuing to develop our team.”
tap here to see other videos from our team.
Rajakovic praised his coaching staff and said, though he believes several will make fine NBA head coaches at some point, for now he expects all to be back.
As for himself, Rajakovic intends to dig hard into how his season went.
“For me, I want to take one step back to be able to soak in all the experiences to analyze what I did well but also to see what my weak spots are, where I need to continue to grow as a coach,” he said. “I’m not shying away from that. I’ve been coaching for 29 years now and I’ve got zero ego. I just want to be the best version of myself, to be the best version for my team and my players.”
He expressed confidence that when the games start to matter more — meaning when his Raptors are chasing play-in and playoff seeding and not ping-pong balls for the lottery — that his in-game adjustments will be up to snuff and that the “good habits” the team has will continue to pay dividends.
His players had been effusive in their support and in their belief that Rajakovic is a good head coach, one that is unique in his willingness to get on the court and work and in how he connects with his charges. But while Rajakovic is happy with the recognition as a “player’s coach,” he also said he won’t be afraid to be tough when warranted.
As players like Scottie Barnes and Ja’Kobe Walter already said Monday, the coach showed that trait at times throughout the season when he chewed them out in front of teammates.
Higher expectations for the Raptors partly come from the significant increase in talent that has steadily been arriving, either in the form of players like Brandon Ingram or in the improvement of those already within the system (plus a high lottery pick is on the way via the draft).
Rajakovic knows that having a deep team will lead to more unhappiness about playing time than has been the case over his first two years with the Raptors.
His players are OK with that (Gradey Dick said Monday competition is good and that “iron sharpens iron”) and so is Rajakovic.
“If I wanted to keep people happy, I would be selling ice cream,” Rajakovic said, drawing laughs from the media. “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. 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 of 15 minutes, are you going to be a good teammate?” Rajakovic said.
“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.”
And this will just be the start — if Rajakovic gets what he wants.
“There is no final goal. We want to position this organization to be a contender to win championships for a stretch of 10 years,” he said.
“When we win the championship — and we will one day — that’s not the end goal, the goal is to go do it again.”
@WolstatSun
Postmedia is committed to maintaining a lively but civil forum for discussion. Please keep comments relevant and respectful. Comments may take up to an hour to appear on the site. You will receive an email if there is a reply to your comment, an update to a thread you follow or if a user you follow comments. Visit our Community Guidelines for more information.