TORONTO – School’s out and graduation day is around the corner.

With the 2024-25 season in the books, the Toronto Raptors have successfully completed Intro to NBA Basketball, a crash course on how to navigate and, hopefully, thrive in one of the toughest professional sports environments on the planet.

Scottie Barnes, the budding star who studied under veteran holdovers from the previous class, has begun to master the ins and outs of leading a franchise. Immanuel Quickley, who has played on teams loaded with talent at his position, learned what’s required to man the backcourt himself. The rookies – they had five of them on the roster, four who played meaningful roles – got plenty of on-the-job training. And Darko Rajakovic, a student teacher turned professor, gained practical experience while showing he could command the attention of the room.

The curriculum was relatively basic, and they were graded on a curve, but everybody passed and is moving on. When they reconvene from their summer break, they’ll return to a different marking system. Process over result will be a thing of the past. They’ll be judged on wins and losses, with pressure to produce more of the former than the latter. In short order, the moral victories better start turning into real ones and the growth they’re striving for will need to be tangible.

For all intents and purposes, the rebuild is over. At his season-ending press conference last April, president Masai Ujiri mused that these things can sometimes take “three to six years.” But, if everything goes according to plan, they’ll have done it in 15 months.

“There is a purpose, there is an honest direction of where [we] are going,” Ujiri said on Wednesday. “And for me, that's always myself and [GM Bobby Webster’s] goal: winning. I know it's been a tough couple of years. But teams go through their cycles, and we believe we're going through ours and hoping that we come out of it soon and attack this thing.”

“I think it was a good season for us; Year 1 of the rebuild, [but] now it’s time for the next chapter and it’s time for us to take the next step,” said Rajakovic on Tuesday. “How do we get there? We get there with doubling down on our habits, doubling down on our hard work, doubling down on believing in our young players and young core, and continuing to develop our team.”

After a tumultuous first season in Toronto – one in which his team won 25 games and traded away a couple of franchise pillars in Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby, unofficially launching the rebuild – Rajakovic can feel good about his sophomore campaign, even if a 30-52 record doesn’t exactly scream success.

He was given a roster that wasn’t good enough to contend for a playoff spot or bad enough to completely bottom out and tasked........

© TSN