TORONTO — Reality will set in soon enough.
The Toronto Raptors will begin their training camp next Tuesday in Calgary, their pre-season the following Monday in Vancouver and their 31st regular season campaign on Oct. 22 in Atlanta.
All the words spilled and hopes and dreams shared won’t matter much when the ball goes up for real.
But until then, anything can happen, so why not dwell on the positive? There will be plenty of time over 82 regular-season games to dissect what the Raptors are missing, and what or who is holding them back.
But for now, let’s take a look at what (or who) could propel them forward. Normally, teams that are coming off 25- and 30-win regular seasons don’t generate loads of reasons for optimism. But for now, why not think positively? Can the Raptors outperform the 37.5-win total that Las Vegas oddsmakers have as their over/under line heading into the season? Can they jump from the draft lottery to the playoffs? There are reasons for concern, which I’ll get to on another day, but it's not all doom and gloom, not in the least.
So, here are five reasons to be optimistic about the 2025-26 regular season for the Toronto Raptors, who last made the playoffs in 2021-22, when Nick Nurse was head coach and Scottie Barnes was a raw rookie.
1. Brandon Ingram will be on the floor: Now, this needs to be taken with a certain amount of sodium, given Ingram played all of 18 games last season and has played more than 65 games — the NBA-mandated threshold to be eligible for most end-of-season awards — just once in his nine-year NBA career, and that was when he was a rookie in 2016-17. But Ingram did play 64 games — the second-highest total of his career — for New Orleans in 2023-24 before a severe ankle sprain interrupted last season.
Having Raptors vice-president of player health and performance Alex McKechnie being able to work with Ingram steadily for seven months since Ingram was acquired from the Pelicans at the trade deadline should only help the former all-star — who just turned 28 — stay on the floor. McKechnie’s guidance has helped the likes of Shaquille O’Neil, Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green — among others — have career seasons after lengthy battles with injuries.
If he can work his magic with Ingram, the Raptors will benefit from having a slithery, six-foot-nine playmaking wing at the top of their rotation. Ingram is one of nine players league-wide who have averaged at least 23 points, five assists and five rebounds a game for the past five seasons (seven of whom have won the league’s MVP award while the other, Luka Doncic, is among the favourites to win it this year). Ingram isn’t really in that class of player, but he’s a very, very good one, and having him healthy and available can only make the Raptors better this season.
2. Continuity can’t hurt: Of the 10 players who played at least 1,000 minutes for the Raptors last season, the only one not returning is Davion Mitchell, the point guard who was traded to the Miami Heat in a salary-saving move at the trade deadline. The player with the 11th-most minutes last season was Immanuel Quickley, whose injury-interrupted 2024-25 season is the main reason Mitchell got as many minutes as he did in the first place.
Ingram's presence will disrupt head coach Darko Rajakovic’s rotation, and it will be interesting to see how the likes of lottery-pick rookie Collin Murray-Boyles or free agent signee Sandro Mamukelashvili affects the minutes for a returnee like Jonathan Mogbo, but the reality is that — barring significant injury — the top eight or nine spots in the rotation are largely set and will look very similar to last season.
In addition, the continuity on the coaching staff is pristine, with Rajakovic entering his third year, and his bench and development staff having zero turnover of note. The message has been and will be consistent. That isn’t to argue that the group that will be on the floor most often has the look of a contender for the Eastern Conference Finals, but the continuity should give the Raptors a higher floor than some might expect coming off a 30-win season.
3. Don’t forget about Immanuel Quickley: To the extent the Raptors point guard has been discussed in NBA circles recently, it’s been mainly about how much money he makes, with the consensus among front office and media types being that it’s too much. The five-year contract he signed in 2024 worth $162.5 million (though with unlikely incentives of $2.5 million each year, it would reach $172.5 million, per Spotrac.com) is largely viewed as an overpay — a cardinal sin in this new era where teams are staring at significant penalties from exceeding the various salary-cap thresholds.
It’s been impossible to argue otherwise, given that Quickley played just 33 games last season and last saw regular action during the Raptors' sad march to the finish of the 2023-24 season, when they were transitioning to their (they hope) short-lived rebuild. But just as the injection of a healthy Ingram should be a significant shot in the arm for Toronto, having Quickly ready and available should be too. And there’s no reason to expect otherwise.
The sharp-shooting lead guard played 188 of a possible 194 games in his previous two-and-a-half seasons with the Knicks before being acquired by the Raptors in late December 2023. He was the victim of a remarkable number of one-off injuries last season, so you have to figure his luck will change. And while we can debate what Quickley’s ceiling is, there is little argument that he is a starting-calibre NBA point guard whose specialty — quality three-point shooting both on and off the ball — is one of the league’s most desired skills and an area of need on the Raptors. Don’t forget that when he joined Toronto for the second half of the 2023-24 season, he averaged 18.6 points and 6.8 assists while shooting 39.5 per cent from deep in more than seven attempts a game in his first real chance to be an NBA starter.
So, regardless of what Quickley is being paid (and given the $32.5 million he is scheduled to earn this season and for the next three years represents just 21.02 per cent of the salary cap this year and descends to just 15.79 per cent in the final year of his deal, is it really that bad a deal?) there is no debate that having him playing 30-plus minutes per game for 75 or so games this season will pay significant dividends for a Raptors lineup that is desperate for what he does best.
4. Depth wins, at least in the regular season: The last time the Raptors' rotation was this deep, they set a franchise record with 59 wins. It was 2017-18 and then-Raptors head coach Dwane Casey was so spoiled for choice that Norman Powell — who has since gone on to prove himself as a perennial Sixth Man of the Year candidate and last season was viewed in some corners as an all-star snub while starting for the Los Angeles Clippers — was Toronto’s 11th man. It was the "Bench Mob" year, when the Raptors' second unit featured a future three-time all-NBA selection (Pascal Siakam), a future all-star (Fred VanVleet), long-term starter Jakob Poeltl, along with Delon Wright, who has been a valuable NBA reserve for a decade.
The group that Rajakovic will likely be bringing off his bench this season — some combination of returnees Jamal Shead, Gradey Dick, Ja’Kobe Walter, Jonathan Mogbo, Jamison Battle, and AJ Lawson, bolstered by Murray-Boyles and Mamukelashvili — is unlikely to reach those kinds of heights, individually or collectively, but they showed last season that they have the ability to compete at the NBA level, and the newcomers should add to that. Rajakovic established a hard-playing, 94-foot defensive standard last season and it was the main reason (well, that and an almost comically weak schedule) Toronto finished 22-21 after its 8-31 start and had the NBA’s third-ranked defence over that 43-game stretch.
Stars win in the playoffs in the NBA, but in the regular season, depth and effort can get a team over the hump on a lot of nights against a lot teams that are lacking in either category or both.
5. The East is least: As the Raptors try to pull themselves up from lottery-land, they aren’t exactly having to free solo the face of El Capitan, or even hike through Algonquin Park during black-fly season. Jumping from 11th in the East to, say, sixth and earning the final playoff spot is more like a long, hot walk on a busy downtown Toronto street — there will be some bumping and jostling and general sweatiness, and you have to keep your eyes open for all manner of rogue commuters, but you should get to where you want to go.
The Cleveland Cavaliers and New York Knicks are the best teams in the conference and the Orlando Magic should join them in the top four, but after that? Anything could happen. Boston, Indiana and Milwaukee are all significantly depleted due to injury, and although Detroit made a nice jump last season into the sixth spot, it won only 44 games and lost its best shooter, Malik Beasley, to a gambling investigation. Atlanta certainly looks improved, but after that there is no unassailable argument that the Raptors can’t make a run for sixth place or even give themselves a chance to compete for fourth behind the Cavs, Knicks and Magic.
There are no locks but heading into a season with a defined path toward playing meaningful basketball and, providing the Raptors enjoy reasonably good health, talking yourself into a 47- or 48-win season for this group isn’t all that difficult. In the Eastern Conference this season, that might be more than needed to be a playoff team and even host Game 1 of the first round.
