{"id":511617,"date":"2026-08-25T23:01:51","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=511617"},"modified":"2026-08-25T23:01:51","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T21:01:51","slug":"darko-rajakovic-my-michael-jordan-is-scottie-barnes-a-fantastic-person-with-a-big-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/darko-rajakovic-my-michael-jordan-is-scottie-barnes-a-fantastic-person-with-a-big-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Darko Rajakovic: “My Michael Jordan is Scottie Barnes. A fantastic person with a big heart”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0Toronto Raptors head coach Darko Rajakovic recently had high praise<\/a> for Scottie Barnes, going as far as calling him \u201cmy Michael Jordan.\u201d<\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Serbian coach considers the 2-time All-Star the cornerstone of the Canadian franchise<\/a>, the player who allows him to coach according to his philosophy \u2014 much like Jordan did for Phil Jackson\u2019s famous \u201ctriangle offense\u201d with the iconic Chicago Bulls.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll the greatest coaches in the game have been fantastic thinkers, philosophers, workers and everything else, but none of them became one of the all-time greats without having a great player. And I think that applies at every level, whether it\u2019s the EuroLeague, the NBA\u2026 Phil Jackson wouldn\u2019t have been Phil Jackson without Michael Jordan.<\/p>\n

My Michael Jordan is Scottie Barnes. He\u2019s a fantastic person, a young guy with a big heart, a hard worker, and I\u2019m really grateful for him.<\/p>\n

He represents everything I\u2019m looking for in a basketball player. He\u2019s one of the very few players in the entire NBA at that level \u2014 an All-Star, a franchise player \u2014 who is always ready to pick up full-court, who really prioritizes defense<\/a>, with defense as his first concern. That makes my job a lot easier.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s different from the typical NBA star. He has different priorities and does different things on the court.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m aware that I wouldn\u2019t be helping the team by asking him to do things outside of my philosophy, or things that players don\u2019t enjoy doing. So I have to say thank you to Scottie Barnes, and not only to him, but to the entire group of players who have that kind of character, guys who are always willing to get their hands dirty and do even the toughest things in order to win. I\u2019m extremely grateful to be able to count on guys like that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Raptors, as is often the case, receive little coverage from the major media outlets, and are therefore frequently underestimated.<\/p>\n

Barnes and Co. won 46 games last season<\/strong>, 16 more than the previous year. And now, barring any surprises, they will also be adding a certain Kawhi Leonard<\/strong> back into the mix<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Barnes and Co. won 46 games last season, 16 more than the previous year. And now, barring any surprises, they will also be adding a certain Kawhi Leonard back into the mix….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":511616,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-511617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/08\/Scottie-barnes-raptors.png","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511617"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=511617"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=511617"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=511617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}