re-acquiring superstar Kawhi Leonard<\/a> in a reported trade with the Los Angeles Clippers.<\/p>\nLeonard was the leader of the\u00a0Raptors\u00a0team that won the 2018-19 NBA championship in his lone season with the club.<\/p>\n
His addition gives Rajakovic another elite defender to add to an already smothering roster featuring fellow all-star Scottie Barnes, promising sophomore Collin Murray-Boyles and tenacious guard Jamal Shead.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0Raptors\u00a0hired Rajakovic on June 13, 2023, to replace Nick Nurse, who helped Toronto to the 2019 title but was fired after the\u00a0Raptors\u2019 loss to visiting Chicago in a play-in tournament game. Rajakovic was charged with re-creating Toronto\u2019s team culture as the\u00a0Raptors\u00a0looked to decisively move on from their championship era.<\/p>\n
Toronto\u00a0Raptors\u00a0forward Kawhi Leonard (2) dunks the ball over top of Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (34) during second half NBA Eastern Conference finals action in Toronto on Saturday, May 25, 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS\/Frank Gunn<\/p>\n
Rajakovic\u2019s first year coaching was filled with hurdles, including the\u00a0Raptors\u00a0front office rebuilding the team with major trades, a raft of injuries to players like all-star Scottie Barnes and the lifetime ban of backup centre Jontay Porter due to match manipulation.<\/p>\n
Toronto stumbled to a 25-57 record in 2023-24, including a franchise-worst 15-game losing skid through March and into April.<\/p>\n
Injuries continued to plague the\u00a0Raptors\u00a0into the 2024-25 season, with the team\u2019s planned starting lineup not playing a single minute together until 35 games into the season. Toronto finished that campaign with a 30-52 record to finish 11th in the Eastern Conference.<\/p>\n
Raptors\u00a0team president Masai Ujiri was dismissed that off-season, with general manager Bobby Webster taking over as head of basketball operations.<\/p>\n
Webster stuck with Rajakovic, and was rewarded with a return to winning basketball in 2025-26.<\/p>\n
Rajakovic had previously coached in his native Serbia, Spain, as the head coach of the G-League\u2019s Tulsa 66ers, and as an assistant for the Oklahoma City Thunder, Phoenix Suns and Memphis Grizzlies.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published July 2, 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto\u00a0Raptors\u00a0have agreed to a multi-year contract extension with head coach Darko Rajakovic, the team announced Thursday. Rajakovic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775947,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194291],"tags":[49,48,82,3302],"class_list":["post-775946","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-toronto","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-sports","tag-toronto"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775946","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775946"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775946\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775947"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775946"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775946"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775946"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}