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FIBA World Cup has Raptors fans wondering if team hired the right coach

Adam Laskaris
Adam Laskaris
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Aug 29 2023, 8:46 pm
FIBA World Cup has Raptors fans wondering if team hired the right coach
Dan Hamilton, Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

When the Toronto Raptors made a switch on who’s operating their bench this past season, it seemed like just about everyone around the team recognized it was time for a change.

With Nick Nurse departing from the team after five seasons in charge, he left the team as the only coach in franchise history to win a championship, but also as one who’d failed to win a playoff series in each of the last three years.

Toronto looked, for lack of a better word, pretty stale through much of last season, and brought in first-time head coach Darko Rajaković this summer after an extensive coaching search.

The team’s front office duo of Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster interviewed upwards of 15 candidates, sources confirmed to Daily Hive, with one of the final candidates being Sacramento Kings assistant coach Jordi Fernandez.

While Fernandez didn’t land the Toronto gig, he was named head coach of Team Canada earlier this summer, taking over for Nurse who seemed to reluctantly step down in order to focus his efforts towards getting acclimatized with the Philadelphia 76ers.

Meanwhile, Rajaković was one of several team employees named in a lawsuit earlier this summer put forward by the New York Knicks, alleging a former Knicks employee, who currently works for Toronto, took thousands of video and gameplan files with him to show his new head coach as the team set up their video department.

It might not have a long-term effect on his success in Toronto, but it’s definitely rare to see an NBA coach get named in a lawsuit before their career even gets going.

And as Fernandez is off 3-0 start with Canada at the FIBA World Cup — and a glowing feature by ESPN’s Brian Windhorst that featured praise from Denver Nuggets head coach Michael Malone, Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch, and Kings coach Mike Brown — Raptors fans are wondering if maybe, just maybe, Rajaković wasn’t exactly the right hire.

It isn’t hard to find Toronto fans thinking the same thing about the man they’re cheering for with their national team.

But perhaps this is all an overreaction, with neither Fernandez nor Rajaković yet to coach even a single game at the NBA level as head coach. And assuming the fallout from the lawsuit isn’t all that serious — which it doesn’t seem like it should be, based on NBA precedents — it’s only fair to offer Toronto’s new coach his own chance to shine.

Still, among a fickle Raptors fanbase who seems to have opinions on just about everything, Rajaković will no doubt be compared to Fernandez throughout the early stages of his career.

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