So has 2025-26 been gravy or ghastly for the Raptors?

There are, by and large, two types of teams in the NBA. There are those trying to win championships, or at least expecting to win a playoff round or two, and those trying to lose lose lose for good draft picks. For more than half a decade, the Toronto Raptors fit into that former category and won the fourth-most playoff games in the league, culminating of course in a championship. Then for a few years, the Raptors fit into that latter category, culminating in Scottie Barnes, Collin Murray-Boyles, and a new hope.

Where are the Raptors now?

Currently, the Raptors belong to a very specific and defined middle class in the league. One that likely neither expects to win in the playoffs nor in the lottery. Losing to the Detroit Pistons in their final game before the break was part of a season-long pattern:

And the Raptors, finally close to full health for the first time in months, once again saw how much further up the mountain they’ll have to climb to accomplish their goals.

Against the top 10 teams in point differential, the Raptors are now 4-11, with a bottom-10 offensive and defensive ranking. The Raptors have slapped the bottom-10 (13-4) and even the middle-10 teams (15-8), but they can’t seem to beat the best. 

The Pistons showed the Raptors just what those best look like.

Middle-class teams beat bad teams and lose to good ones. That’s precisely where the Raptors have found themselves this season. The meaty middle of the NBA is a difficult place to leave, of course. It’s easy to lose games and tear down the studs. The Raptors spent a few seasons doing just that. (Though losing the most games in the league is actually pretty hard, as it turns out.) But those losing days are over. The Raptors are a relatively veteran team with an enormous talent in Scottie Barnes. An All-Star talent! And you can’t lose forever when you employ a player like Barnes. He’s too good. So they find themselves winning.

And yet, given Toronto’s performance against the league’s best, the Raptors probably can’t expect to win a playoff series this upcoming playoffs. But neither are they going to get a good draft pick. That isn’t necessarily bad. Coming out of the All-Star break, the Raptors enjoyed a 58.2-percent winning percentage, which is practically identical to Toronto’s 58.5-percent winning percentage in 2013-14, Kyle Lowry’s second season as a Raptor (which was, of course, the season of the Rudy Gay trade). But it took work for the Raptors to build upwards from that 2013-14 season.

Improving from the middle is hard. It’s possible, though. Just look at the last iteration of these Raptors.

That 2013-14 Raptors’ team rostered Lowry, DeMar DeRozan, Patrick Patterson, and Jonas Valanciunas. Of course, only Lowry was on the team that won a championship five years later. But the others played integral roles on very good teams. Greivis Vasquez and Terence Ross were traded for players on the championship teams. The Raptors built, slowly but surely, by nailing roster moves from the middle. They picked exceptional players late in the first round, sometimes not even in the draft at all.

These 2025-26 Raptors are starting to win around the edges, too. Jamal Shead looks like he could be the type of second-round draft pick that could impact the future of a franchise. Barnes, like Lowry before him, wins at so many of the tiny details around the court that it’s pretty easy to find winning lineups with him as the foundation. Brandon Ingram fulfills, if you squint, a comparable role as DeRozan before him. (Also, even if you don’t squint.) There are similarities here.

But the road forward doesn’t walk itself. I far prefer watching teams that try to build from the middle rather than tank over and over. Caring about basketball is more fun than not. That doesn’t make it easy. From 2013 to 2019, the Raptors nailed practically every detail around the edges. If these Raptors can repeat the process, this season of course will be not just a success, but a launching pad. Just like that one.

There is the risk that this season becomes the gooey middle that entraps the Raptors for the foreseeable future. That this team caps out as a slightly-above-.500 squad, that it can’t beat the best, that it fails to add more elite talent to the roster. The 2013-2019 Raptors traded its players (Ross, Valanciunas, Vasquez, DeRozan, others) from positions of strength. If players like RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley, Jakob Poeltl, and others aren’t going to be lynchpins of the next Raptor championship, can the team trade them from positions of strength?

Just because the Raptors can’t beat the best teams in the league doesn’t mean this season is a disaster. It has been, unless you were more optimistic than virtually any other observer before the campaign, a season of cherries on top. Losing to teams further along in their plans doesn’t invalidate Toronto’s. But nor does it guarantee Toronto’s future success. What happens next will in many ways help label this season as success or failure. Not next week, or next month, but next year and the several after that.

The Raptors are, finally, engaged in a team-building project aimed far at the future yet isn’t underpinned by losing, boring basketball. It’s a hard road to walk, which is why so few NBA teams find themselves on this path. But there’s precedent from this very franchise. And with two All Stars, and Barnes already a Defensive Player of the Year candidate, the Raptors could already be ahead of schedule.

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