‘Coach of the Year candidate’: Zach Lowe praises Raptors’ Darko Rajakovic

The Toronto Raptors are four games above .500 for the first time in a long time, and the vibes are justifiably high.

After Monday night’s dramatic 110-108 over the Charlotte Hornets improved the Raptors to 9-5 on the season, folks around the league took notice — even stirring up some early award buzz.

“Darko Rajakovic, early-season Coach of the Year candidate,” said NBA insider Zach Lowe on Monday’s edition of the Zach Lowe Show.

The Raptors have won eight of their last nine games and now rank eighth on offence, 10th on defence and boast the league’s 10th-best net rating.

And according to Lowe, it’s largely due to Rajakovic’s efforts to this point.

“Every year there’s one or two teams like this … there is this feedback loop of ‘all right, we all have to buy into playing a little bit differently, a little bit out of our comfort zones’ … and then we start winning and the feedback loop kicks in of like ‘oh, this works.’ The buzz is building. All boats are lifted by winning, I’m going to lean even more into playing this way.”

Rajakovic’s odds of winning what would be his first-ever NBA Coach of the Year award, and the franchise’s fourth, have jumped up in recent weeks — eighth-best at plus-2000 currently (per BetMGM).

Lowe went on to commend the third-year head coach for finding “the right rotations” through the Raptors’ strong start, mixing and matching starters and reserves around star forwards Scottie Barnes and Brandon Ingram.

“Scottie gets his minutes alone with a bunch of bench guys, and he gets his minutes with other perimeter guys other than Ingram … and B.I. gets the inverse minutes and B.I. gets to kind of cook in those minutes.”

It’s been quite the turnaround for the Raptors and Rajakovic after a 1-4 start had some questioning if the Serbian bench boss could handle expectations. Since then, he’s tinkered with lineups, made in-game adjustments and has propelled Toronto forward.

The Raptors’ halfcourt offence — a weakness for some time now — has become a strength, ranked fifth in the NBA (per Cleaning The Glass), while the over-aggressive defence has stabilized to a manageable degree, ninth in opponent turnovers per game while limiting teams to a league-low 31.8 per cent shooting from beyond the arc.

All of which has come in stark contrast to the Raptors of recent memory — following back-to-back seasons of 30-or-fewer wins and three years without a playoff appearance — and has been enough to turn opinions around the NBA.

“I haven’t had a chance to talk happily about this team for a while,” said Bleacher Report’s Mo Dakhil when chatting with Lowe on Monday.

“I love the way they’re playing offensively. I had a lot of concerns about that going into the season. I was very negative on the Raptors going into the year, just thinking like, how is this offence going to work? … I love this team. I love the way they play offence, I think it’s a lot of fun as one of the fastest teams out there … I have to give credit to the coaching staff, I thought they’ve done a great job.

” … it’s pleasing to watch. They’re busting their ass on defence, they’re playing so incredibly hard on defence … I love everything they have going on.”

And with a 10-game stretch coming up in which the Raptors will face more sub-.500 teams than not, and the seventh easiest strength-of-schedule remaining overall (per Tankathon), there’s plenty of reason to believe the good times will keep on rolling.

“This team could be … 13-7 after 20 games,” said Lowe. “Something interesting is happening here. This is working. This is a real thing.”

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