In trading for Ingram, the Raptors are walking on the edge of a knife.

The Toronto Raptors had a clear plan for the 2024-25 season. Lose games. Develop players. Inject massive talent in the offseason as a result. Not so hard. There have been fun stretches — even with wins! — but by and large, the season was going brilliantly. Lots of losses. Each one a step forward to a brighter future.

But Masai Ujiri and company seemed unable to commit to the plan. Ujiri started previous seasons ready to win with Pascal Siakam and Scottie Barnes. That didn’t work. So eventually it became time to ship Siakam and OG Anunoby and rebuild. Time to lose. Well, no, a few months later, time to trade for a former All Star in Brandon Ingram who is about to get paid big money. It’s hard to look at Toronto’s last few years and see a confident, self-assured hand guiding a single plan forward. Things have been much more responsive than proactive.

And if this was the plan — adding another wing who loves the mid-range, is assuredly talented, and is about to get paid — then why not just pay Siakam to begin with?

I digress. All that is sort of beside the point. What ifs and hypotheticals are irrelevant. The Raptors traded for Ingram. What now?

He’s a career 20-point-per-game scorer who’s been between 21 and 25 per game since 2019-20. The picture of consistency. He has also been in the 100th percentile for long mid-range frequency this season and last — and he connects on such shots on solid rates (between 43- and 47-percent accuracy for each of the last several seasons), but not quite great enough for a team to build an efficient offence around those scoring skills. In fact, his career effective field goal percentage is 51.3 percent. He is, of course, a very good passer with great size who finishes incredibly at the rim, despite not getting there a whole lot.

If all of that sounds familiar, it’s because it also describes Barnes. He is in the 92nd percentile for long mid-range frequency this season. He has been building his offence out of the post, out of midrange jumpers. He has a low effective field goal percentage (career average of 50.9). He scores 20 points a game. He is, of course, a terrific passer with great size who finishes incredibly at the rim, despite not getting there a whole lot. If Siakam and Barnes didn’t fit well together, which Ujiri seemed to insinuate at times, then it doesn’t necessarily mean Ingram and Barnes will be any cleaner a fit.

Ingram is a solid 3-point shooter, and he ramped up his volume this season before an ankle injury has kept him out for the last several weeks. (He remains without a timeline to return — more on that in a moment.) Perhaps that can blend things in a smoother fashion.

And though this is critical, Ingram is immediately Toronto’s most talented scorer on the roster. By a wide margin. He averaged close to 1.0 points per possession on isolations in 2022-23 and 2023-24. He will immediately be Toronto’s highest-frequency and highest-efficiency driver, as soon as he steps on the court. Those are huge wins. Toronto traded two veterans in Bruce Brown and Kelly Olynyk who didn’t seem to have long-term futures with the team, and who weren’t winning their minutes. This is a talent upgrade. A huge talent upgrade. Monstrous. On top of those veterans, the cost was also Indiana’s 2026 first-round pick (acquired in the Siakam trade), as well as a second-round pick. Crucially, the Raptors keep their own 2025 first-round pick.

So there is a plan here. Toronto can make this thing work. As mentioned earlier, Ingram is out with an ankle injury, and he hasn’t played since early December. He remains without a timeline to return. If he sits for too much longer, he likely won’t impact Toronto’s ability to lose games this season. The march forward for a top pick remains. Then Barnes, a healthy Immanuel Quickly, Ingram, the flashy new rookie (Cooper Flagg? Dylan Harper??), some vets in Jakob Poeltl and RJ Barrett, and a bunch of youngsters with more seasoning would enter the 2025-26 season ready to make some noise.

That’s the plan, at least. Plenty can go wrong. If Ingram returns to play sooner rather than later, Toronto might just find its way to too many wins for a high draft pick this year. Which would undermine the entire reason for the rebuild in the first place. When Ingram is playing, especially alongside Barrett, that leaves precious few minutes for young, developing wings like Ja’Kobe Walter, Gradey Dick, and more. Furthermore, Ingram is an upcoming free agent and about to get paid quite a bit of money. His contract is almost certainly going to be north of $30 M a year, and perhaps north of $40 M. With Barnes’ new max contract about to kick in, Quickley’s big payday already signed, and big contracts as well for Barrett and Poeltl, the Raptors would instantly be one of the most expensive teams in the league. The Raptors just tore apart an expensive team that featured Anunoby, Siakam, and Barnes. Would this new roster be definitively better?

Or what if he walks? It’s possible that he could not play much this season, then sign elsewhere in the offseason. That would be a huge waste of assets. The hope has to be that Toronto knows the future, to some extent, in trading for Ingram. That he can be re-signed.

So there’s a plan. There are plenty of pitfalls. And the Raptors continue changing the plan. Perhaps it will change tomorrow, too, with another day available for trades. There could be more shoes to drop. It could all work out, with the Raptors buying cheap to add a huge influx of talent. But in committing to this new path, and paying draft capital again when the team is predicted to be a seller, not a buyer, the Raptors are walking on the edge of a knife. Stray but a little, and it will fail.

The post In trading for Ingram, the Raptors are walking on the edge of a knife. first appeared on Raptors Republic.