Optimism after an awful year
Team didn’t fracture under Rajakovic’s leadership as everything piled up
It was a crappy Raptors season in many regards — “it’s not easy to lose,” coach Darko Rajakovic said Tuesday morning — and the summer will be spent searching for answers.
Rajakovic will examine what his team did and the ways it failed. He will look at himself to see what worked best and what needs work. He’ll catch his breath after a long and exhausting season and then gird himself for the battles ahead.
“I like to watch different teams, different leagues, I like always to catch up to see on some new tendencies in basketball world. I like to read books,” Rajakovic said in his season-ending media session. “I like to work on myself as a leader. What I can do better?
“I have a list of stuff that, during the course of the season, I’m thinking about and because of the nature of business I don’t have enough time to address during the regular season.”
Rajakovic didn’t get into a lot of specifics because there’s a laundry list of things that need to be done. Scottie Barnes can be a better leader, RJ Barrett can expand his game, Immanuel Quickley can be a more multi-faceted scorer, Ochai Agbaji can be a better defender, Gradey Dick has to get bigger and stronger.
Rajakovic and his staff will fan out across the continent preaching development for every player because they all have facets of the game that need improvement.
There is time now to work on the many tasks. But the coach will remind everyone that this is a long process and there are no fast fixes. The losses during the regular season ate at him, and the desire to make his players better every day for the big picture drove him.
“I have high expectations for our guys to put a lot of work in and to get better but … we entered the rebuild process over the course of the season and this process is never easy and never turns the corner too quickly,” he said.
“We understand that this is a process and we understand that we have a lot of work to do over here. We’re going to have a lot of patience with our guys but at the same time we are entering every single game and next season with high expectations to be very competitive and to win as many games as possible.”
The reasons to expect a rebound lie in the fact things can’t go as wrong as many ways next season as they did in this one.
Rajakovic has only seen the key group of Quickley, Barrett, Barnes and Jakob Poeltl in short bits, just enough to create a sense of optimism — to a point.
“My eye test tells me that there is a lot of potential there and a lot of opportunity for growth,” Rajakovic said. “But at the same time I don’t want to look at a small sample and say that’s it and then tend to take it for granted. I think there’s definitely things that we can do better, offensively and defensively, with that group there.”
The players, and everyone else around the team, showed an ability to weather difficult times. They didn’t fracture under Rajakovic’s leadership when everything piled up. There were the major trades of OG Anunoby and Precious Achiuwa at the end of December and Pascal Siakam three weeks later, season-ending injuries to Barnes and Poeltl to open March, and extended bereavements for Barrett and Quickley later in the month. It seemed every manner of disruption affected the team.
“We were dealt some really tough cards this season and it was easy to point fingers and say it’s his fault, my fault, his fault, her fault,” Rajakovic said. “And I think we as an organization — every part of the organization — stayed together and understood what we were going through.
“We understand the only way that we’re going to build is by being on the same page and being together.”