Darko Rajakovic was something of a surprise choice to helm the Toronto Raptors. But just because he’s an outlier among NBA head coaches doesn’t mean he came out of nowhere.
It’s a Friday night in Burnaby, B.C., and the crowd arriving to watch the Toronto Raptors intrasquad scrimmage could be excused for wondering if they got the start time wrong. Instead of a typically low-key exhibition game to cap off training camp, featuring a goodly share of uncontested dunks, open threes and some yuks, the Raptors are being put through a high-paced practice. Full-court 5-on-0s with offensive sets run to their third, fourth and fifth options; half-court drills with the same thoroughness, while details regarding spacing, timing and ball movement are noted and corrected.
In the middle of the floor, a relatively small man takes in every element with an artisan’s eye. He refers occasionally to the folded practice plan in his right hand to make sure everything is going to script, calling out encouragement when it does, sanding off a rough edge when it doesn’t. Open scrimmages are not often the place of an NBA head coach. Typically a couple of assistants run the show, the boss taking the opportunity to rest his voice and his feet after a long week. But Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic is not one to miss an opportunity to improve his team. He learned his trade at the vaunted Serbian Basketball Academy, the hothouse for one of the most fertile coaching cultures on the planet. He honed his craft in cold gyms with concrete floors in Serbia, basketball a reprieve from the conflicts that had torn apart the Yugoslavia of his youth. He’s 44 years old now and has been a coach — a hard-earned title where he comes from — since he was a teenager. Having made the unlikely leap from Europe to the NBA just over a decade ago, this season he becomes just the second European head coach in league history, a chance perhaps only he saw coming. He didn’t get this far by skimping on details or letting moments of precious practice time go to waste. The Raptors will scrimmage here in Burnaby, eventually. The 1,500 fans in the stands won’t go home disappointed. But first, there’s work to be done.
