NBA Realities

Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic has indicated that the team isn’t focused on winning games during the 2024-25 season. He stated during media day that the organization’s top priority was player development. 

“There was a lot of checkpoints with players, a lot of opportunities to talk to them, to work with players and also there was a lot of opportunity for me and my coaching staff to focus on areas that we want to improve, learning from other coaches, other leagues, other teams,” he said. “It’s always an opportunity to learn doing the summer.”

“Obviously the goal is to compete and to win every night,” Rajakovic said as the Raptors kicked off the franchise’s 30th season at media day Monday. “But at the same time we got to understand where we are, we got to understand … we are starting Year 1 of our rebuild.

Darko Rajakovic’s Offense

Although Darko Rajakovic’s intentions are in the right place, he doesn’t run the correct offensive system to develop the roster. Last season, he ran a ball movement offense, and Toronto averaged 296.9 passes per game, sixth in the league.

A significant amount of the Raptors’ ball movement is generated from the elbow. For example, Immanuel Quickley dribbled the ball up to the three-point line versus the Hornets on March 3rd, 2024. He passed the ball to Jakob Poeltl, standing near the left elbow. Poeltl immediately passed the ball to Ochai Agbaji, who was cutting the basket for a layup.

Darko Rajakovic’s offensive sets allowed Toronto to be 5th in the league in cuts per game, averaging 9.3 possessions. The Raptors were productive in this play type, averaging 12.3 points and shooting 67.2% on 7.9 attempts per game. 

Toronto’s passing and off-the-ball movement helped the team rank sixth in assists per game, averaging 28.5. Those assists generated 71.8 points per game, the seventh most in the league.

Despite the Raptors’ superb ball movement, they finished 21st in scoring, averaging 112.4 points per game. The team’s subpar performance was related to its three-point shooting. The Raptors ranked 27th in three-point percentage, shooting 34.7% on 33.1 attempts.

Raptors’ 3-point shooting

Toronto’s subpar shooting was tied to having fewer than four players on the roster with a career three-point shooting percentage above 36%. Before the OG Anunoby trade to the New York Knicks, Anunoby and Gary Trent Jr. were the only players who fit the criteria, shooting above 37% on at least five attempts per game.

After the trade, Kelly Olynyk and  Quickley replaced Anunoby in the criteria as they shot above 36% on at least 3 attempts per game. Darko Rajakovic’s roster’s lack of three-point shooting led opponents to leave Toronto wide-open behind the arc. 

The Raptors averaged 19 wide-open threes per game, 9th most in the league. Toronto made 38.5% of those attempts, 21st in the league.

Raptors’ president Masai Ujiri didn’t address the issue during the 2024 offseason, as Olynyk and  Quickley are stated to be their most consistent shooters. Therefore, Darko Rajakovic has to depend on practices to improve the roster shooting.

Unfortunately, NBA coaches rarely have intense practices during the season. On April 22nd, Fred Katz of The Athletic indicated that  Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau doesn’t physically drain his players during practice anymore.

Knicks players say their practices aren’t as strenuous as most on the outside assume. Especially during the second half of the season, when the schedule became more debilitating and New York dealt with a wave of injuries, Thibodeau opted against physical fatigue.

When the Knicks meet, they say the emphasis is more mental.

They will dissect coverages. Thibodeau also runs pre-practice practices, encouraging the young and new players to arrive at the facility beforehand to go over plays. He drills them over and over and over. Get it wrong, and you’re doing it again. They refer to themselves as “the early group.”

At any given moment, even when he bumps into someone in the hallway, Thibodeau could give a pop quiz to one of his guys about what to do on any given play. Players must focus more on their minds than their legs.  

Given the Raptors’ roster construction and the state of practice in the league, Darko Rajakovic will struggle to achieve his player development goals.