Toronto Raptors newly appointed Head Coach Darko Rajakovic poses for a photo in Scotiabank Arena on June 13.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
It’s been a while since Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment had anything to celebrate. So like a lot of people in a rut, it decided to throw itself a party. A party for what? A party for whatever.
The excuse was the hiring of a new Toronto Raptors head coach. With due deference, the hiring of Darko Rajakovic on Tuesday is a deal of some kind, but it’s not a big one.
Until a few days ago, only deeply committed fans of the game would recognize Rajakovic’s name. The team he’s being given is average and in no danger of getting better soon.
But the Raptors decided to play it like V-E Day. They set up a stage out of doors in Maple Leaf Square. They put up balloons. They had the office minions at 50 Bay St. schlep outside to give the occasion some atmosphere.
For the first time since COVID, the grandees of MLSE came together in public. Owners, enough C-suite types to start a second basketball team, former and current players, assistant GMs, assorted spouses. It felt less like a routine hire and more like the funeral episode in Succession. The seating chart hinted at who’s in and who’s out.
Overseeing everything was Masai Ujiri, MLSE’s employee of the month every month for the past four years.
As is his habit when announcing a bit of a wild swing – appointing a rookie head coach qualifies – Ujiri was nervous. The stacked crowd was out of practice. When Ujiri handed things over to his new coach, they missed their cue to cheer.
For a moment, you had the impression this was going to end up flat. Then the new guy got going. I can’t say anything yet about the Rajakovic’s head-coaching ability, but his facility for networking whilst on a podium is world class. The 44-year-old Serb had memorized the name of every important person in the audience, and there were a lot of them. He name-checked about a million people from his past. He spoke of Toronto as if getting here has been his greatest ambition since birth.
“I could not dream about being in a better situation in a better city,” Rajakovic gushed.
Later, he spoke of “the best president, the best GM, the best ownership” in the league.
Some people are good at this sort of thing, and then there’s Rajakovic. He has the gift of charming a room without saying anything you can recall afterward with specificity – like a sort of Balkan TED talk.
He wisely avoided saying much about the team he inherits because, let’s face it, the team is a mess. Not good, not bad and so, in NBA terms, not anything at all.
“I really like the roster, the way it’s built,” Rajakovic said.
Which part? The one where no one can shoot, or the part where everyone forgot how to defend?
To understand what Rajakovic is here to do required some code-breaking. Asked what his main goal is, Rajakovic said that “the biggest thing is to see players improve.”
It’s the sort of thing modern coaches say all the time, but if the Boston Celtics were hiring someone right now, it wouldn’t be the first thing mentioned.
There, and at a half-dozen other genuine contenders, it would be winning. Rajakovic isn’t foolish enough to promise that.
He’s here to do developmental work. At best, Rajakovic can help a so-so squad overachieve. At worst, he’s here to manage the tank that Ujiri never got around to when he first arrived.
Either way, he sounds absolutely delighted.
“I have a smile on my face so much my face is starting to hurt,” Rajakovic said, setting up the straight line.
Ujiri: “We haven’t told him the bad parts yet.”
While the guest of honour did most of the talking, your eye was drawn to the real power broker seated beside him. Ujiri spent much of a half-hour turned fully to face Rajakovic, staring fixedly at him. Whether he was entranced by what he heard or admiring the bafflegab, it was hard to tell.
Between the sun beating down, Rajakovic’s blandishments and Ujiri’s silence, the effect was soporific. You could feel everyone drifting off.
It was meant to end with closing remarks from the emcee, but Ujiri busted in.
“We should really, really, like, honestly, appreciate this moment with the Toronto Raptors,” Ujiri said. “I’m calling on all the fans, on everybody, people in the organization, everywhere, this is a time to follow. This is a time to support. This is a time to win. This is a time to go. Let’s go and win. Let’s go and do it again. We saw this thing happen last night [the Denver Nuggets winning a title]. We’ve done it here before and we’re going to do it again. Amen.”
When Ujiri has shifted into Knute Rockne mode in the past, the results have been electric. Not this time, and not with this crowd.
All he got was polite applause. Ujiri might’ve been better off reading from a quarterly report. Then someone mentioned there was free ice cream. Everybody, including the few fringe players on hand, perked up.
It seems a long time since Ujiri spoke for a remarkable hour right after the Raptors’ 2019 championship. He said then that he wanted Toronto’s basketball team to be as big around the world as Liverpool Football Club.
He said it with such zeal that in that moment you believed he might actually be able to make that possible.
Those days are done. Despite all the furious intracompany back slapping, the entire stable of MLSE franchises are back to being regular teams in a regular city doing regular things.
So in lieu of something tangible to celebrate, they settle for handing out party favours and trying to convince us it’s 2019 forever and ever.