When Darko Rajaković began assembling his coaching staff for the Toronto Raptors this season, he was looking for something different. He was essentially given a blank slate by the Raptors, who decided to part ways with all but one of the coaches from the previous regime.
Where do you look when you have nearly a dozen positions to fill?
Everywhere.
“Different coaches bring different perspectives to our match preparation meetings,” Rajaković said of coaching diversity. “Obviously they have different experiences, so it’s always fresh and good for me to hear something different or new. »
Perhaps the most unusual experience of the bunch is that of Toronto’s man in charge of analytics, James Wade, the 48-year-old former head coach and general manager of the WNBA’s Chicago Sky.
For Wade, the Raptors job basically fell into his hands, he joked Friday after practice. He hadn’t considered leaving the WNBA, but a brief phone call with Raptors president and vice president Masai Ujiri when Wade was initially hired as Sky’s general manager sparked a relationship between the two men. At the time, Wade was looking for advice on becoming a successful general manager in the basketball world. What he didn’t realize was that the man on the other end of the line would one day become his boss.
“It’s never been an aspiration for me,” said Wade, who maintains he prefers to take life one day at a time. “When the opportunity (to join the Raptors) came, I was waiting for someone close to me to tell me I couldn’t do it, and everyone was like ‘holy shit, you have to do it .'”
Wade knew what Toronto was before he signed up. He was in town a few months earlier, coaching the Sky in the WNBA preseason game in Toronto. That’s when he really discovered how amazing Toronto can be, especially in the summer.
Since then, he has focused entirely on the Raptors, a transition he admitted was initially nerve-wracking. Sure, he had coached Candice Parker, one of the greatest WNBA players of all time, but as Wade will admit, the NBA remains the pinnacle of the basketball world with more resources than anywhere else.
It turns out, however, that coaching is quite similar.
“I thought it was different, but when you meet these guys and coach them and talk to them, it’s not really different,” Wade said. “One of the other things is I throw the ball over the backboard and they catch it and dunk it. Other than that, the personalities, talent, commitment to the game and love for the game are all the same.
Like Rajaković, Wade sees the benefits of having a diverse staff. Toronto has built a group with experience spanning the globe through overseas coaching experience, G League experience, college coaching duties and, with Wade, extensive women’s experience.
“There’s a reason for the colors of a rainbow,” Wade said of diversity. “All colors are different and they complement each other and when things are too white or too black you have no room for growth, but I think everyone here is open-minded and tries to grow in the same direction and I think that’s the most important thing.
The players seem to agree.
“Basketball is different wherever you play it and they come here and give us their wisdom and we take those details and apply them to the court,” Scottie Barnes said. “They know what they’re talking about.”
For Rajaković, a first-time NBA head coach, this is going to be crucial. It’s clear that he relies heavily on his assistants, asking them to push him back and come up with new ideas. For a team that, for better or worse, has been at the forefront of some of the league’s most innovative new ideas, that diversity can only help Toronto find what’s next.
