The 2024-2025 Toronto Raptors
What would a successful season for the Toronto Raptors look like this year? I imagine that is a question that garnered much interest after the trade deadline last season. Would fans this season be content to see the Raptors go 0-82?
The current situation is one many Toronto sports fans have not had to experience for some time. The Maple Leafs have been largely successful in the regular season since drafting Auston Matthews as the first pick in 2016, and the Blue Jays, aside from a hiccup this year, have been mostly competitive and playoff-bound since 2020. For the first time in a while, the Raptors are the odd ones out.
Considering the team’s success over the last ten years, this type of regression should be expected. Their current situation is not all doom and gloom, however, as they have respectable pieces with the likes of Gradey Dick, Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley, and RJ Barrett. This core is a decent young group, but it lacks a true superstar. As much as Raptors’ hopefuls may believe Barnes can reach that level, he has yet to do so. Barnes and Quickley have been given extremely lucrative contracts, and while Quickley’s play has yet to impress this season, the ink is yet to dry, and he can likely turn things around.
I now return to the pivotal question: what does a successful season this year look like for the Raptors? If I had to guess, most people would like to see the young players perform well while the Raptors lose enough games to win a good pick in the draft lottery and take a shot at drafting a potential superstar-level player. Granted that the NBA draft is a crapshoot, the Raptors have been arguably the best organization in the NBA at drafting and developing talent, so people should be confident they can make the right choices. After all, this is the team that drafted Scottie Barnes at number four, the year Jalen Suggs was the consensus pick at that spot. It is also hard to forget Pascal Siakam at number twenty-seven, OG Anunoby at number twenty-three, and singing an undrafted Fred VanVleet. The Raptors can evaluate talent like no other team, but it is just a matter of actually getting to use those picks (which they have consistently traded away) rather than commit to being stuck in the middle up until last year. Finally, general manager Bobby Webster and president Masai Ujiri can be unleashed to start high lottery picks—something they have only been able to do once in their entire tenure.
Despite all eyes being on the lottery this season for Raptors fans, a cloud looms over this team. I am sure most Raptors fans want to see a high lottery pick, which, yes, usually means an abysmal record, but we simultaneously want to see improvement and strong play from our younger players. This is often the most challenging part of being a tanking team like the Raptors. Ideally, improvement from young players translates to winning, but the team does not desire to win this season. So, in an ideal world, the players are good enough to hang with most teams but barely lose each game, only for the Raptors to win this year’s draft lottery. Ideally, that high pick translates neatly into winning next season, right? Every sports fan should know it is never that simple.
It may be years before we see this organization create another highly competitive Raptors team. Many of the pieces are already there, but many felt this way about the core of Siakam, VanVleet, and Anunoby, yet the farthest that group went in the playoffs was a second-round exit. The NBA is a league where you are either at the top or you are at the bottom. Decent teams are never going to win. Look at the champions throughout history—it does not happen. Top teams win, not decent ones.
The Raptors are currently dead last in the NBA at 2-12. I shudder at the thought of us being worse than the Detroit Pistons and Washington Wizards, but here we are. The Raptors are finally doing what so many have asked for. While it may be exhausting as a fan to hope your team loses every game, we should still all smile knowing that the next potential superstar is on the horizon. That is a feeling this team has not known for a very long time.