Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic has had an excellent start to his first playoff experience as an NBA head coach.
He has made adjustments, and they have worked.
The Raptors head to Cleveland with their first-round series against the Cavaliers tied at 2-2 in part because of some of the moves Rajakovic implemented on the fly coming out of halftime in Game 2.
The Raptors lost the game and fell behind 2-0, putting their season in doubt, but the outlines of their two wins back at Scotiabank Arena showed themselves in the second half.
-
Raptors return to the playoffs on Sportsnet
Having evened up the series 2-2, the Toronto Raptors visit the Cleveland Cavaliers looking to take control. Watch Game 5 Wednesday at 7:30 p.m. ET/ 4:30 p.m. PT on Sportsnet ONE and Sportsnet+.
Broadcast schedule
It was at that point the Raptors began experimenting with their ball-denial strategy against Cavaliers guards James Harden and Donovan Mitchell, an elevated role for rookie Collin Murray-Boyles as well as shifting some of their defensive assignments to give Scottie Barnes more primary responsibility on Harden.
In the Raptors’ Game 3 blowout victory at home the measures went into full effect with six-foot-seven wing RJ Barrett shifted to cover Cavs centre Jarrett Allen, Raptors centre Jakob Poeltl tasked with guarding Cleveland power forward Evan Mobley and even more emphasis on causing problems for Harden and Mitchell before they even had the ball.
But Rajakovic hasn’t been perfect. There have been mistakes, as well.
For example, at halftime of Game 4, Rajakovic had a rare stumble. The Raptors were leading 38-36 in what was the lowest scoring half of NBA playoff basketball in more than 10 years, and their third-year head coach from Serbia tried to rally the gang that wasn’t shooting straight.
“I told the guys at halftime, ‘It’s awesome … We’re shooting (28 per cent) from the field and 15 per cent from the three-point line,”’ Rajakovic said of his club. “I was lying. I told them we were going to shoot better in the second half. We did not. “We’ll leave that for the next game. Whatever it takes. Whatever it takes. Just find a way to win the game.”
Failing to predict that his team was going to follow up their first-half three-of-20 splatter-fest from three in the first half by shooting just 10 per cent – one-for-10 – in the second half is an error that Rajakovic can easily own because so much of everything else he’s tried has gone right since the Raptors got blown out in Game 1.
It was after Game 1 that Raptors all-star Brandon Ingram ignited a minor controversy with his “me shooting nine shots is not going to win basketball games” line. At the time it seemed like a challenge to his head coach but Rajakovic has been proven wise in using the Cavaliers’ strategy of over-playing Ingram against them.
Rather than force the offence through his leading regular-season scorer, Rajakovic has diversified and the Raptors have benefited with Barnes (25.8 points per game), Barrett (24.3) and Murray-Boyles (17.0) using the extra room available to take over the scoring load.
Rajakovic’s decision has worked so well that the Cavaliers abandoned their ‘blanket Ingram’ strategy for Game 4 and shifted their focus to Barnes – which didn’t work, either.
It’s just one more micro-decision by Rajakovic that has helped generate the momentum in the series the Raptors have now. It was the lingering question on his coaching resume: How would he manage in the glare of the post-season?
Quite well, it turns out.
“I think it’s his energy. His positive energy each and every single day, motivating us every single time,” said Barnes. “Motivating us every single time, even when we were missing [shots]. Just constant motivation, constant positive energy, constantly trying to push us to get better, focusing on the right things, instilling confidence in every single player. I think that’s what makes everyone work harder.”
Coaching at the NBA level requires an almost impossible mix of skills: the ability to manage a large staff, connect with management, relate with ownership, represent a multi-billion-dollar franchise as its most public-facing employee and inspire locker rooms full of 20-somethings that either have already earned generational wealth or are clawing for an opportunity to get theirs.
And that’s all before the game starts.
Once the ball goes up its 4D speed chess, with every timeout, play call and substitution carrying consequences that are exponential compared to the ‘play it, flush it’ reality of the 82-game regular season marathon.
Then the time between games is spent analysing every spare moment with the hope of arriving at the next game having nailed every detail that could affect your team’s performance.
As well, for good measure, the other team’s coaching staff – themselves stocked with decades of high-level coaching experience – is doing the same thing.
“It’s just hitting the right the right tone and giving players the right amount of information that they can actually retain, because at the end of the day, we have all this wealth of knowledge [but] you can overload them … that’s when their minds get jammed up, and they don’t play freely,” said Cleveland head coach Kenny Atkinson. “On the other hand, you can’t give them too little … you want to help them, and they want that help.
“There’s always that debate. ‘Is this too many clips? Is this one too many breakdowns in practice?’ There’s definitely a real feel to that … and there’s a physical aspect of it … ‘How long can we go in practice? Should we go short? Should we go long? What’s the intensity?’ There’s all this information.”
Atkinson later added: “I don’t know how many decisions you’re making as a coach in a day. It’s mind boggling. And in a game? I don’t know, hundreds? I’ve never calculated it. It’s part of the job. It’s a fun part of the job, but it’s challenging.”
For Rajakovic to have risen to the challenge at this stage of the playoffs is another checked box on his coaching profile, but in some ways the least significant.
That the Raptors won even while shooting the lowest percentage from the field by a winning team in any playoff game since 1976-77 tells a bigger story.
With a shot chart resembling first graders’ finger painting, the Raptors having the collective will required to defend, possession by possession, while missing 66 out of 97 shots and giving up 16 offensive rebounds in Game 4 will stand as his first-round Rembrandt.
“I told the guys at halftime: That was one of the biggest halves I’ve ever seen because we kept missing shots, open shots, (and) to continue to come back and have the wherewithal to defend at a high, high level, on top of missing the shots, is elite,” said 17-year NBA veteran Garrett Temple. “Credit Darko. Credit the coaching staff for building that into us the last few years, to have that mindset.”
It’s Rajakovic’s mindset, and he’s distilled it into a group that’s both receptive to it and has the ability to implement it.
“The fight that we had and the attention to detail and rebounding the ball, taking care of the ball. All the stuff we preach night in and night out came out to winning the game tonight. We just never, never flinched,” said Rajakovic.
It’s coaching for sure, but it’s also a reflection of the person delivering the message. When Rajakovic was hired in the summer of 2024 he was a slightly surprising choice to take over from Nick Nurse. He had a profile among NBA insiders, but to make him just the second European to be a head coach in the NBA came with some risk.
However, Rajakovic never doubted himself. He introduced me to the Serbian concept of “inat” when I interviewed him for a profile on his coaching path before his first NBA game.
“It’s literally proving to people that you can do something in spite of their disbelief,” he said to me at the time. “It’s a Serbian mentality. We have inat to prove everybody wrong, that we are going to overcome this … that’s something very characteristic of our people.”
Three years later and midway through his first playoff series, inat is proving to be the characteristic of the team he coaches as well.