The underappreciated potential of the Toronto Raptors
Once upon a time, the summer was NBA doldrums.
Only the most obsessed argued with themselves while their friends touched grass.
Sigh.
Those days are over. NBA content is 24/7/365/12/infinity now. There’s no going back.
Popular culture content churner, The Ringer, for example, continued to pump NBA stuff out like it was a Twinkie factory days before a nuclear holocaust. (Both of which I love to consume, don’t get me wrong.)
That also means, it’s that time of year – as is tradition – to underestimate or dismiss altogether the Toronto Raptors.
Earlier this summer, for example, The Ringer’s Bill Simmons and Ryen Russillo ranked the worst NBA teams for the next five years. Russillo had Toronto – not Brooklyn, not Washington, not Charlotte, but Toronto – with the bleakest future. Around the same time, Zach Lowe, on the Zach Lowe Show, brought Rob Mahoney on to break down the Toronto Raptors as one of his “WTF Teams”. Both failed to see how the starting five “translates to a functional NBA offence.”
A few weeks later, Michael Pina joined Lowe, this time to tier the Eastern Conference. Pina was kinder to Toronto (he remains a believer, still). Lowe not so much. He ranked Miami, Milwaukee, and ennnnhh [Zach Lowe doubtful inflection] Philadelphia ahead of Toronto, with Boston and Indiana in the same pool of “Play-In” teams. The Raptors are, in his words, a “morass” of talent and a bench of “complete wild cards”.
Hey, at least we have talent!
Elsewhere, Bleacher Report’s 2025-26 way-too-early power rankings put Toronto at 25(!) with Phoenix (24), Sacramento (21), and Chicago (20) all ahead. While Yahoo’s Kevin O’Connor had Toronto hovering around the Play-In only after our very own Es Baraheni coaxed an answer out of him on the spot.
It was ESPN that laid it on thickest, though, proclaiming Toronto as lost a franchise as any in the NBA. In their “All-In” rankings of all 30 NBA teams, the Raptors were snugly grouped alongside the league’s crème de la crème of the rash, listless, and incompetent – Sacramento, Chicago, and New Orleans – as the “All-In…on Nothing” teams.
Rankings are what they are. As are prognostications. In summer no less. Whatevs.
Besides, they’re all, mostly, making well-considered arguments [except Russillo, I don’t know what the Hell he was on about]. No Superstar. No true point guard. No consistency. No shooting. No experience together. No spacing. No bench. No back-up centre. Those wearing the brownest-coloured glasses have plenty of choices why Toronto might suck.
That’s fine too. Flaws are flaws. We all got ’em. You don’t exactly need a fine-toothed comb to pick ’em out of most Eastern Conference teams.
No, the issue to me is the double standard.
The talk of the town these days is the NBA’s newest sea change. Where rosters – thanks to the Second Apron system, specifically, and style of play across the league, generally – need to be younger, deeper, more dynamic, more versatile, and more dependable at both ends of the floor.
No longer do skeleton rosters with Big Threes and specialists suffice – sorry, Mr. Ishbia. The League is too fast, too intense, and too tiring. Indiana Pacers’ head coach, Rick Carlisle, said as much on Caitlin Cooper’s podcast a month back.
Layer on top of that the need for flexibility and adaptability, and rosters six-to-seven players deep won’t cut it.
It also means that winning rosters skew younger. The 82-game slog and the unrelenting playoff battles render older bodies worn and crumbled.
The Oklahoma City Thunder, the second youngest team in the league last year according to NBAage.com, and Indiana Pacers (12th youngest) exemplified all of this best – obviously – flexing their depth and versatility to flummox and overwhelm opponents. (Boston and Dallas were 14th and 15th youngest, respectively, the year before, by the way.)
It’s not all that complicated when you think about it. Winning, in this iteration of the NBA, requires more athletic players to be more talented at more things. Natural selection at its finest.
Still, it’s not easy to do. To thread the balance of depth, affordability, and talent. That’s, virtually, the quotient in professional sports – unless you’re the Florida Panthers or Los Angeles Dodgers, apparently. Sabermetrics made that especially so. But with the NBA’s new draconian collective bargaining agreement, it’s harder to achieve.
Hence, why we’re seeing more and more talented players – Josh Giddey, Jonathan Kuminga, and Cam Thomas, among others – stuck unsigned. And, why teams, like the Toronto Raptors, might take bigger swings on unearthed or scorned talent. The margins between cost and upside are narrower than ever, the timing of it all even tighter.
Teams are trying. Denver offloaded Michael Porter Jr. [Earth to MPJ’s PR Team: you gotta stop him from doing all these podcasts] to accrue several, cheaper veterans. As did the Los Angeles Clippers, giving away Norman Powell. New York and Orlando, finally, built out benches. And Houston added depth to an already bountiful roster.
Everyone across the NBA celebrated the genius of it all.
And, here, after all that, exists the disconnect.
On the one hand, analysts cast the Toronto Raptors’ roster as crowded, ill-fitting, and directionless. Yet, at the same time, they laud teams, like the Pacers and Thunder, for anticipating the growth of their talent and peppering in a few veterans along the way.
Of course, it all looks hunky-dory after the fact; there was a lot more skepticism before the winning.
Indiana was projected as middling, at best. Most still doubted Tyrese Haliburton as the main guy. Pascal Siakam remained underrated – as we all know too well. And the other young Pacers – Andrew Nembhard, Aaron Nesmith, Ben Sheppard, Benedict Mathurin, and Obi Toppin – had much to improve upon for Indiana to contend again.
The Thunder faced some – albeit limited – criticism too. Not Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, of course, but the supporting cast of Chet Holmgren, Jalen Williams and the other young’uns were unproven. Many predicted they would falter under the pressure of the playoffs. They were wrong.
I’m not saying the Toronto Raptors are Conference Finals material. [Or am I?] But they are building out a model similar to that of the Pacers and Thunder, and few, if any, understand that.
For one, the Raptors have a burgeoning, potential Superstar in Scottie Barnes. He, like Haliburton, is as dangerous creating for himself as he is others. With Barnes the crux of the offence, those around him thrive: shooters find more space; cutters uncover wider lanes; bigs see more lobs; ballhandlers and screeners enjoy more interplay.
The same can be said for Barnes’ effect at the defensive end where the Raptors allowed 4 points fewer with him on the floor, according to pbpstats.com. Barnes’ ability to switch through an opposing lineups allows the Raptors to deploy various lineups and mask certain vulnerabilities. He’s even more dangerous off ball, gobbling the glass and snuffing out attacks at the rim. Add that he is, virtually, the same size as LeBron James, and Barnes is one of the more unique elite players in the league.
For two, of the core, only Jakob Pöltl will be 30 in the coming year. Brandon Ingram, who is expected to carry a heavy scoring burden, is still only 27 with much to add to his elite offensive arsenal. The others – Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett, and Gradey Dick – are only just now entering their primes. They showed plenty of growth last year; slotting them further down the offensive hierarchy should provide them even more space and opportunity to evolve.
The collective improvement of the assorted rookies, sophomores, and third-year guys coming off the bench are more integral to this team winning than, perhaps, one would like. That said, should any, or several, pop, the Raptors suddenly have a young coalescing roster many across the league desire.
Naysayers do bemoan the team’s fit. Fit is vital, sure. Fit is also amorphous. It fluctuates and grows into itself. Players are not puzzle pieces. One might have looked at Indiana at the start of the season and thought their team was overcrowded with undersized forwards and poor-shooting guards. What Pacers’ management anticipated – and, most importantly, others did not – came to fruition as the year progressed.
There is similar redundancy in Toronto and a vision seen by management too. A young, long, athletic, multi-dimensional core [sound familiar?] whizzing about, winning the war of possessions.
We saw bits of it emerge last year. In the latter half of the season, the Raptors were one of the better defending (second best defensive rating post-All-Star break), offensive rebounding (fourth best offensive rebounding percentage post-All-Star break), and passing (fourth best assist percentage post-All-Star break) teams in the league. The Raptors tyranny over Summer League was, perhaps, a sign of more to come.
Regardless, it’s not that this team will succeed, it’s that few are acknowledging the possibility they could.
True, Barnes has yet to break out the way many hoped. And, true, most would consider the Ingram, Barrett, Quickley, and, maybe [incorrectly], Pöltl contracts as negative assets. That says more about prejudice than it does the reality of this roster’s potential. Finances and on-court success are not always indicative of one another. Especially, when there’s upside to be gained.
What if Barnes makes a leap like Cade Cunningham or Paolo Banchero last year? A substantial jump from him, likely, plunks the Raptors in the top half of the East. Maybe Ingram returns to All-Star form. Maybe the flashes shown by Barrett, Quickley, and Dick manifest. Or, maybe, the inexperienced bench transforms into an unyielding nightmare for opponents. Suddenly, then, all the pre-conceived notions of this team change.
There is, indeed, a world where this Toronto Raptors team kicks ass. Where it all aligns. Where excellence becomes contagious. Where Head Coach, Darko Rajaković, extracts the most from his team. Where work ethic, morale, and growth thrust the Raptors into Eastern Conference playoff contention.
And where all the doubters are proven wrong.
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