Rajakovic’s office isn’t particularly big — there’s space for a desk and a low circular table with some additional seating around it – but when the floppy-haired 20-year-old ambled in after practice, joining him was a starting lineup’s worth of Raptors staffers. On hand in addition to his head coach were assistant Ivo Simovic, who has been attached to the rookie’s hip since Summer League in Las Vegas; Raptors 905 head coach Eric Khoury; Mery Andrade, a player development coach with both the Raptors and 905; physiotherapist Nikki Garcia; as well as a member of the team’s strength-and-conditioning staff. “He knew there was a meeting, but seeing five or six people in a meeting, it draws your attention,” says Rajakovic. “We were blatantly clear with him, this is where his focus needed to be.” The purpose, in a nutshell, was to layout a 360-degree solution to rescue Dick’s rookie season.
In the bigger picture, it’s worth pointing out that your average rookie doesn’t arrive in the NBA wide-eyed and completely unprepared for scrutiny, even adversity. Dick didn’t have to go to Kansas as the golden child star of his recruiting class and deal with the inherent pressure that came with the choice. And he didn’t have to transfer from his local high school, where he was the focal point of the team, to Sunrise, where suddenly he had to carve out a role among a roster of bigger and more experienced players. He didn’t have to declare for the NBA Draft as a 19-year-old either. As a local star at a big-time program, he made good NIL money. There were no financial pressures, and one NBA executive told me that if Dick had played another year at Kansas there’s a good chance he would have been a top-five pick this summer, which would have meant a richer entry-level contract. He could have been the man for another year with the Jayhawks instead of figuring out how to survive in the NBA, but there are no regrets. “My mom kept reminding me that my dream was to play at Kansas,” Dick says. “But I had to remind her that, yeah, it was my dream to play at Kansas, but my all-time dream was to be in the NBA, and I would never pass it up for anything. [Leaving college] was the best decision I ever made. I love it here.”
