Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic gets a team of his own after enduring long grind

Raptors coach Darko Rajakovic amassed almost 3 decades of grinding through various leagues to get his 1st NBA coaching job.

Eight coaches stood in a visitor’s locker room as Darko Rajakovic introduced each Toronto Raptors assistant individually as “future NBA head coach.”

Small gesture, yes.

Will they ever forget it? No way.

But it’s the little things like this, amassing over nearly 30 years at the youth, college and pro levels on two continents, that built the relationships and currency for Rajakovic to stand strong in this latest endeavor. The second European to become an NBA coach, Rajakovic dreamed of this opportunity, modeling an approach after legends Zeljko Obradovic and Gregg Popovich.

“Those were my choices at the time, and I cannot really formulate why,” Rajakovic said of the former head coach of the Yugoslavian national team and the coach of the San Antonio Spurs.

“But they were the coaches that take care of the people first. I don’t know if that was in me before, or if I recognized that in them. I have to sit down and think about that one.”

This photo was taken back in 2008. Many things have changed since then but Coach Pop stayed the same- original, honest and caring. I’m grateful for your friendship and mentorship @NBA #basketball #Grateful pic.twitter.com/KAYUNoLgw7

— Darko Rajakovic (@DRajakovic) April 23, 2021

Like Rajakovic, his role models emanate from Serbian roots.

Popovich’s father, Raymond, was Serbian. Obradovic, also Serbian, coaches in the Basketball League of Serbia, and is often regarded as the greatest coach in European history.

Rajakovic faces a fan and fellow countryman in Nikola Jokic on Wednesday when the 11-15 Raptors host the defending champion Denver Nuggets at Scotiabank Arena (7:30 ET, League Pass).

“[I hope] he’s here for a long, long time,” the two-time Kia MVP said last June during the NBA Finals. “In [12] years from G League coach to head coach in the NBA, it’s a lot of respect for him and his hard work. He’s [seen] a lot, he’s been through a lot, and I think he deserves it.”

A cross-continent journey 

Realism and critical self-evaluation accelerated Rajakovic’s ascent into coaching. The 44-year-old started playing basketball at the age of seven. By the time Rajakovic reached 16, he realized it was time to hang up the sneakers and grab a whistle.

A future as a professional basketball player just wasn’t in the cards.

So, at 16, Rajakovic started coaching eight-year-olds on a youth BC Borac Cacak team in his hometown of Cacak, Serbia. He eventually moved on three years later to another youth squad, Red Star Belgrade. While leading the 16- and 18-year-old teams of that program, Rajakovic also attended the Belgrade Basketball Academy for hoops as well as the University of Belgrade, where he majored in Greek.

If that wasn’t enough, Rajakovic by then had caught the eye of former Spurs assistant general manager Sam Presti, who now serves as executive vice president and GM for the Oklahoma City Thunder.

Presti brought Rajakovic aboard with the Spurs to keep track of prospects from around the Balkans while putting together scouting reports and learning the backgrounds of the various players in the region.

Rajakovic wrote those scouting reports for the Spurs while leading Red Star Belgrade to two Serbian championships during his eight-year tenure (1999-2007).

Memphis Grizzlies coach Taylor Jenkins interned in the Spurs’ basketball operations department during the 2007-08 season before working six more years as an assistant for the franchise’s NBA G League affiliate. Jenkins and Rajakovic bonded during their time together with the Spurs.

Rajakovic toiled as a scouting consultant and assistant on San Antonio’s Summer League staff from 2004-11.

“He and I are really close friends, brothers in the NBA,” Jenkins told NBA.com. “He is such a selfless individual, which I love to have around me. When you are around him, you see his love for teaching and that’s something he and I really connected on. He has helped me to become a better coach, and I’m so glad he’s earned this opportunity to lead his own program.”

But before that, Jenkins would hire Rajakovic in 2020 as an assistant on the Grizzlies staff.

“He’s got a unique story and that really rubbed off on me a lot,” Jenkins told NBA.com. “Just the creative mind he has, his connection with European basketball. He could bring in different influences that rubbed off on me. It’s no surprise he is a head coach in the NBA now because he has this big-picture mentality, trying to find different ways from A to Z to get better.”

Sometimes, that required ingenuity on Rajakovic’s part.

In 2009, he moved to Madrid to take over Espacio Torrelodones of the Spanish EBA League. A Thunder executive recently told the story of the Raptors coach learning to speak Spanish in just three months after arriving in Spain. In that first season, the Torrelodones advanced to the Primera Division Community of Madrid Group title and climbed up a division.

“It’s true,” Rajakovic told NBA.com of his three-month semi-mastery of Spanish. “I had only one player who spoke English on the team. Everybody else, they were looking at me like I was crazy. So, my back was against the wall.”

In the beginning, Rajakovic relied on his lone English-speaking player to help run practices.

“I took classes right away,” he said. “In three months, I was able to run the practices without any problems. But to become really fluent, it took me a year to feel comfortable.”

A long-awaited arrival 

Rajakovic coached in Europe from 1996 to 2012 while also working with the Spurs as a side hustle, when Presti made the call to officially bring the Serbian to the States full-time.

Presti asked Rajakovic to leave Madrid to take over the then-NBA-D-League Tulsa 66ers. In addition to the time coaching abroad, Rajakovic visited the University of Arizona to pick the brain of Lute Olson while also embedding himself at Duke with Mike Krzyzewski to broaden his basketball knowledge and sharpen his coaching skills.

So, it’s no surprise Rajakovic has also published academic journal-style pieces waxing poetic on the evolution of the pick and roll.

“He understands the game. He’s come up the right way,” Popovich said. “He learned a lot overseas and he continued that when he came here. He’s good with people. He’s straightforward, honest, a no-B.S. kind of guy. You can always count on him.”

Rajakovic coached three seasons with the 66ers before joining the Thunder staff as an assistant.

OKC advanced to the playoffs in four consecutive seasons (2016-19) on Rajakovic’s watch. The Serbian would leave Oklahoma City in 2019 to join Monty Williams’ staff in Phoenix. The two had previously worked together on the Thunder staff.

After only one season with the Suns, Rajakovic bolted to join Jenkins in Memphis.

Darko Rajakovic joined the Grizzlies staff in 2020, the same year guard Desmond Bane was drafted by Memphis.

“That’s my guy,” Grizzlies guard Desmond Bane told NBA.com. “He’s done a lot for me and helped me to get to where I am. He got my career off the ground because he cares. He loves the details. If you’re willing, he’s willing to get you better.”

Three years later, “the 27 years of my life I invested,” Rajakovic said, “and a lot of family sacrifices” finally placed him in the position he’d worked towards since he was a teenager.

Rajakovic replaced Nick Nurse in June, becoming the 10th coach in Raptors history.

“I’m very aware I’m here because God put me in this position,” he told NBA.com. “That doesn’t mean I’m [the] best. That doesn’t mean there are not better coaches than me. Probably, there are. But I’m [a] big believer of when you do things right, treat people the right way, [things work out]. [The] coaching profession is not a 100-meter sprint. It’s a marathon.”

That’s what Toronto expects from Rajakovic, who leads a young, developing Raptors squad that has advanced to the playoffs only once in the last three seasons.

“I wish I could play all 15 guys every single night 48 minutes and everybody’s averaging 13-10-10,” he told NBA.com. “But that’s not the reality of the job. They all want what’s best for the team. At the same time, they have private lives. They worry about contract extensions. A million things are going on. I just want to make sure they know I’m in their corner. I’m there for them.”

There’s always the inherent pressure to win in the NBA. But Jenkins was on to something when describing Rajakovic’s “big-picture mentality.”

Serbian Igor Kokoskov in 2018 became the first European to be named coach in the NBA, and he lasted only one season in Phoenix. So, while Rajakovic feels immense “pride” in becoming the second European and Serbian coach in the NBA, he likens the current situation to the plight years ago of foreign players trying to make inroads in the league.

“What I’m really also trying to do is to represent profession for Europe as best I can and hopefully, this is gonna [be] like 15-20 years ago [when] some players came in and opened the doors for new players,” he told NBA.com. “I’m hopeful NBA on the coaching side is gonna become a global game like it is for players.”

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