The Raptors finished building their coaching staff on Thursday, adding former Rockets head coach Stephen Silas alongside returners Pat Delany and Jama Mahlalela, while promoting Matt Vest to assistant coach. The timing is not incidental: multiple reports have the team nearing a contract extension with Kawhi Leonard, and a deeper, more experienced bench is exactly what a front office builds when it expects to keep its best player for years rather than months.
Darko Rajakovic now has four voices on the bench instead of two returning names, which matters less for tonight's product and more for what it says about organizational intent. Coaching depth is a resource teams add when they expect real seasons, plural, not a placeholder staff for a rental star.
If the Leonard extension closes, this week reads as the moment Toronto stopped treating him as a short-term asset and started building infrastructure around him. That is the more consequential story than either move read alone.