Rajakovic turned us into believers

The following is part of Raptors Republic’s series of pieces reviewing the season for the Toronto Raptors. You can find all the pieces in the series here.

This past season was the most successful Raptors season in the post-covid era. Darko Rajakovic converted the entire Toronto Raptors fanbase into believers in the last five games of the season. 

Even with a janky roster with a glaring frontcourt weakness, the Raptors exceeded expectations. After three seasons and a playoff series where they nearly took down the league’s most expensve NBA team in history, Darko proved to be the catalyst behind the Raptors’ defensive identity.

‘Defensive identity’ may seem like a nebulous term, but getting players to actually buy into it takes time and effort … just as your identity as X or Y takes time to actually grow some legs.  

The Raptors’ defensive identity was built out of necessity, to compensate for their offensive weaknesses by aggressively trapping, blitzing, and deflecting the ball whenever they can. This brand of basketball necessitated relying on each other – for example, peel switching to mask IQ’s on-ball defensive weakness. And when the blind doubles were too aggressive, Rajakovic learned to modify.

His approach turned bad defenders into serviceable ones and average ones into good ones.

“It’s not just that Coach Darko has teased a great deal of effort out of his roster, but that he’s built in more help for those who need it. …. The Raptors employ more aggressive live-ball switching. If you get beat? You rotate off your man and someone else steps in. It changes the types of passing reads that players are used to making. These types of changes help the Raptors mitigate some of their weaknesses on ball.” – via Samson Folk

This defensive identity also forced fringe players to adapt to Darko’s system. In Rajakovi’s end-of-season presser, he mentioned how five Summer League players – Walter, Lawson, Shead, Battle and CMB – got PT in the playoffs. Lawson and Battle earned their minutes because they contributed to the Raptors’ defensive system, even if their strengths lied on the offensive end of the court. 

“The defence Darko Rajakovic wants is one that pressures and scrambles like crazy, peel-switching behind the play and generating gobs of turnovers in the process. With hard-nosed backcourt disruptors Jamal Shead and Ja’Kobe Walter complementing their frontcourt demons, the Raptors forced turnovers on 17.5 percent of their defensive possessions against Cleveland. That was the third-highest for any team in any 2026 playoff series (bested only by the Lakers’ two opponents) and they did it against one of the regular season’s least turnover-prone teams. That style of defence is not a prerequisite for playoff success (the Knicks and Spurs both had relatively low-takeaway systems), but it can clearly still drive success in the age of possession obsession.” – via Joe Wolfond

The Raptors solidified its defensive identity in Darko’s third year, and getting Kawhi to buy into Darko’s defensive system should be fairly easy. With so much of the defence fuelling the offence, he faced challenges in improving Toronto’s offence.

He will continue to face this even though he now has an upgraded roster to rely on.