Blake Murphy Sports Writing

MONTREAL — Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic began his second training camp with a drill designed to set a tone: One-on-one, picking up full-court.

Rajakovic’s messaging at Monday’s media day also leaned heavily on the defensive side of the ball. While in 2023-24, Rajakovic was charged with reimagining the team’s offensive culture, there are no utterances of the word “selfish” now like there were some 18 months ago. The Raptors may not have been good offensively last year, but they stuck to Rajakovic’s stylistic vision, tallying more assists, passing the ball far more frequently, and, until an injury- and tragedy-raddled end to the year, showed progress beneath middling results within that system.

If last season was a sort of prequel to what Rajakovic has called “year one” of the rebuild, this year the focus is largely on figuring out how to initiate offence. This time around, the team seems aware they’ll need to take massive leaps defensively to get back to being competitive. Roster caveats noted, last year’s team ranked near the bottom of the league in almost every defensive category except for foul frequency (it turns out you don’t foul a lot if you’re not guarding at all).