Raptors expedite rebuild with confusing bet on Ingram
Published
TORONTO – The Raptors never wanted to rebuild. Not really.
They were reluctant to do it, put it off as far as possible, and waited at least a year too long to pull the trigger, but they finally got there and for a minute or two they seemed to be embracing it.
“There are temptations here to try to make the team [better], try to push and do deals that might not help the team in the future, but we have to look at the future of this team and be patient,” Masai Ujiri said last spring, a few months after trading Pascal Siakam – the last remaining fixture of the 2019 championship core – and unofficially pivoting to the next era, the Scottie Barnes era.
“Sometimes rebuilds can take three to six years. Sometimes teams act before [that]. I think we’re going to see how this process goes and use our instincts with it, but patience is going to be a big thing with this team.”
Toronto was stuck in limbo, clinging to the remnants of its championship past. Then, it settled on a definitive path – short-term pain for, hopefully, long-term gain. Develop a young core around Barnes while simultaneously putting themselves in position to find his future running mate, likely through the draft, in the hopes of building a championship future.
And now? Who knows. The plan seems to have changed again.
On the eve of Thursday’s NBA trade deadline, less than 13 months after Siakam was dealt and the rebuild began in earnest, the Raptors acquired New Orleans Pelicans star Brandon Ingram. In exchange, they gave up the expiring contract of Bruce Brown, Canadian centre Kelly Olynyk, the 2026 top-four protected first-round pick that they got from Indiana for Siakam, and a 2031 second rounder.
You can understand the allure. This is a bet on talent and, despite his deficiencies (and we’ll get to those), Ingram isn’t lacking for talent. He’s an all-star-calibre player in his prime and perennial 20-plus point per game scorer.
In its 30-year history, Toronto has never been able to recruit that type of player on the open market, and even if it could, the team wouldn’t have had the cap space to sign Ingram – a pending free agent – outright this summer. Now, they have his Bird Rights without having to pay a king’s ransom. They bought low, which is generally considered good business.
The price was right. But the fit and the timing? That’s where there are questions.
Ingram is an incredibly gifted offensive player; one of the league’s best pure scorers and a much-improved playmaker. He’s also a below average three-point shooter and inconsistent defender. He does most of his work in the mid-range, where Barnes and RJ Barrett tend to operate. The on-court fit is murky, at best.
On top of that, he hasn’t played more than 64 games since his rookie year with the Lakers and has been limited to 18 contests this season, having missed the last 27 with an ankle injury. He hasn’t proven that he can stay healthy or shown that he can impact winning at the highest level – he’s won two playoff games in nine NBA seasons.
It’s an unusual move for a team that came into the deadline with a record of 16-35, one that is in the first full year of a rebuild and has repeatedly preached patience. This is not what patience looks like.
The patient approach would have been a boring one, the type of move they made later in the day: using their financial flexibility to absorb salary (exchanging pending restricted free agent Davion Mitchell for more expensive two-time Raptor P.J. Tucker, who they’ll likely buy out), help Miami get under the first apron and get a second-round pick back for their trouble.
It didn’t make headlines or blow minds like several other teams did in an unprecedented lead up to the deadline – one that saw Butler, De’Aaron Fox, Zach LaVine, Anthony Davis and freaking Luka Doncic, among others, change teams – but it’s good, solid business for a team that should be accumulating draft capital, not trading it away.
While the price to add a 27-year-old former all-star was fair, the opportunity cost could be substantial. This is the second time in three years that the Raptors were in prime position to chase a generational star in the draft but, rather than selling at the deadline and increasing their lottery odds, they opted to be surprise buyers and trade a first-round pick for the right to pay an expiring player.
The trade for Jakob Poeltl at the 2023 deadline was polarizing to say the least. Many, both inside and outside of the NBA, expected them to sell off their underperforming veterans and take a shot at Victor Wembanyama. Still, the move was defensible – they had a talented team built to be competitive and were coming off a 48-win season.
But for a club in the early stages of a rebuild, trading away a first-round pick for anything less than a surefire foundational piece is verging on malpractice. That it wasn’t their own pick and projects to fall in the 20s makes it less egregious, but this feels like a shortsighted, desperate attempt to expedite a process that was on track and progressing well. The young players were making strides, playing hard and competing for head coach Darko Rajakovic, and despite a recent run where they’ve won eight of 12 games, they still have a bottom-five record, or top-five odds of landing the first-overall pick and Duke phenom Cooper Flagg.
It's reminiscent of the trade for Rudy Gay in 2013 – a Bryan Colangelo gambit, with the former Raptors general manager firmly on the hot seat. Gay was a fringe all-star, talented but flawed, who’s strengths and weaknesses intersected with the best players on the roster. Ultimately, it stunted the growth of Kyle Lowry and, particularly, DeMar DeRozan, and froze the team in mediocrity until Ujiri came in and cleaned up the mess.
Ujiri has always exercised patience, sometimes to a fault. Even the Poeltl trade was made in an effort to keep his post-championship core together a little bit longer. This is not a typical Ujiri move, but we’ve also never seen the long-time executive navigate through a rebuild. Maybe he didn’t have the stomach for it. After missing the playoffs in three of four years and with the impending change in ownership at MLSE, maybe he was feeling the pressure to – as he likes to say – win again in Toronto, and to do it sooner rather than later.
For this gamble to pay off, Ingram will have to get and stay healthy and mesh with the rest of the core; that part is obvious. From there, final judgement on the trade will be contingent on, but not limited to, the answers to the following questions.
How do they manage the rest of the season, especially as it pertains to Ingram’s availability? Not much is known about the nature of his injury or timeline for return. He’s been out since spraining his left ankle in early December. The last status update from the Pelicans was that he would be re-evaluated in two weeks. That was six weeks ago.
As currently constructed, this team is probably too good to bottom out. With better health and a friendlier recent schedule, that had already looked to be the case and now they’re adding Ingram.
There are only four teams below them in the standings (Washington, New Orleans, Utah and Charlotte) but four more teams are within six games (Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago and Portland), all of whom have varying degrees of incentive to tank. Following a tough stretch leading into the all-star break, the Raptors have the NBA’s easiest schedule, meaning it will require some serious roster manipulation to even maintain their current lottery odds. This deal would look a whole lot better if it doesn’t impair their chances of landing a possible difference maker in the top-heavy 2025 draft.
Once Ingram is cleared you would imagine that he’ll want to play and, presumably, the team would want to see how he looks with the others before paying him. But can they do that while also slow playing his return and being selective about the games that he – and the other starters – play down the stretch? Will that even be enough to lose games against the likes of Washington, Utah, Charlotte, Brooklyn and Portland, who make up 10 of Toronto’s final 19 games?
Then, what does Ingram’s next contract look like? One would assume the Raptors have gotten some assurances from the player and his camp before giving up a first-round pick for him. They believe he wants to stay, and at least have a ballpark idea of what it will cost to make that happen.
Ingram surely wants something close to his max, worth roughly $50 million annually. The sense is that Toronto would feel comfortable with something in the $30-35 million range (he’s making $36 million this season). In this scenario, though, the leverage belongs to the player, like it did with Poeltl in the summer of 2023 or OG Anunoby and the Knicks and Siakam and the Pacers last off-season. When a team surrenders meaningful assets for a player’s Bird Rights they’re pot committed, and you can be sure Ingram’s representation (which happens to be Klutch) will make note of that in contract negotiations. By shedding the final year of Olynyk’s deal in the trade, the Raptors should have enough space to make it work while avoiding the luxury tax for next season but, with Barnes’ max extension kicking in, it will be tight.
What might that mean for the future of Barrett, who will be extension eligible in the summer and surely looking for a raise after boosting his stock in Toronto this past year? If this experiment isn’t successful, either on the court or in the spreadsheet, it’s not hard to see him being the first casualty.
On paper, the return for Siakam looks a lot better than it did a year ago. A package of Ingram (acquired for Brown and one of the Pacers’ first-round picks), the much-improved Ochai Agbaji (acquired for Oklahoma City’s 2024 pick, via Indiana) and intriguing rookie Ja’Kobe Walter (drafted with the third pick they got back in that deal) is nothing to scoff at. But it was never about winning that trade and it’s not necessarily about winning this one.
For this to work, it needs to help push the Raptors rebuild – or whatever we’re calling it now – forward. If it doesn’t, they could find themselves back in the unenviable position they were in before it started: the murky middle. Ujiri would have to wear that.
They were reluctant to do it, put it off as far as possible, and waited at least a year too long to pull the trigger, but they finally got there and for a minute or two they seemed to be embracing it.
“There are temptations here to try to make the team [better], try to push and do deals that might not help the team in the future, but we have to look at the future of this team and be patient,” Masai Ujiri said last spring, a few months after trading Pascal Siakam – the last remaining fixture of the 2019 championship core – and unofficially pivoting to the next era, the Scottie Barnes era.
“Sometimes rebuilds can take three to six years. Sometimes teams act before [that]. I think we’re going to see how this process goes and use our instincts with it, but patience is going to be a big thing with this team.”
Toronto was stuck in limbo, clinging to the remnants of its championship past. Then, it settled on a definitive path – short-term pain for, hopefully, long-term gain. Develop a young core around Barnes while simultaneously putting themselves in position to find his future running mate, likely through the draft, in the hopes of building a championship future.
And now? Who knows. The plan seems to have changed again.
On the eve of Thursday’s NBA trade deadline, less than 13 months after Siakam was dealt and the rebuild began in earnest, the Raptors acquired New Orleans Pelicans star Brandon Ingram. In exchange, they gave up the expiring contract of Bruce Brown, Canadian centre Kelly Olynyk, the 2026 top-four protected first-round pick that they got from Indiana for Siakam, and a 2031 second rounder.
You can understand the allure. This is a bet on talent and, despite his deficiencies (and we’ll get to those), Ingram isn’t lacking for talent. He’s an all-star-calibre player in his prime and perennial 20-plus point per game scorer.
In its 30-year history, Toronto has never been able to recruit that type of player on the open market, and even if it could, the team wouldn’t have had the cap space to sign Ingram – a pending free agent – outright this summer. Now, they have his Bird Rights without having to pay a king’s ransom. They bought low, which is generally considered good business.
The price was right. But the fit and the timing? That’s where there are questions.
Ingram is an incredibly gifted offensive player; one of the league’s best pure scorers and a much-improved playmaker. He’s also a below average three-point shooter and inconsistent defender. He does most of his work in the mid-range, where Barnes and RJ Barrett tend to operate. The on-court fit is murky, at best.
On top of that, he hasn’t played more than 64 games since his rookie year with the Lakers and has been limited to 18 contests this season, having missed the last 27 with an ankle injury. He hasn’t proven that he can stay healthy or shown that he can impact winning at the highest level – he’s won two playoff games in nine NBA seasons.
It’s an unusual move for a team that came into the deadline with a record of 16-35, one that is in the first full year of a rebuild and has repeatedly preached patience. This is not what patience looks like.
The patient approach would have been a boring one, the type of move they made later in the day: using their financial flexibility to absorb salary (exchanging pending restricted free agent Davion Mitchell for more expensive two-time Raptor P.J. Tucker, who they’ll likely buy out), help Miami get under the first apron and get a second-round pick back for their trouble.
It didn’t make headlines or blow minds like several other teams did in an unprecedented lead up to the deadline – one that saw Butler, De’Aaron Fox, Zach LaVine, Anthony Davis and freaking Luka Doncic, among others, change teams – but it’s good, solid business for a team that should be accumulating draft capital, not trading it away.
While the price to add a 27-year-old former all-star was fair, the opportunity cost could be substantial. This is the second time in three years that the Raptors were in prime position to chase a generational star in the draft but, rather than selling at the deadline and increasing their lottery odds, they opted to be surprise buyers and trade a first-round pick for the right to pay an expiring player.
The trade for Jakob Poeltl at the 2023 deadline was polarizing to say the least. Many, both inside and outside of the NBA, expected them to sell off their underperforming veterans and take a shot at Victor Wembanyama. Still, the move was defensible – they had a talented team built to be competitive and were coming off a 48-win season.
But for a club in the early stages of a rebuild, trading away a first-round pick for anything less than a surefire foundational piece is verging on malpractice. That it wasn’t their own pick and projects to fall in the 20s makes it less egregious, but this feels like a shortsighted, desperate attempt to expedite a process that was on track and progressing well. The young players were making strides, playing hard and competing for head coach Darko Rajakovic, and despite a recent run where they’ve won eight of 12 games, they still have a bottom-five record, or top-five odds of landing the first-overall pick and Duke phenom Cooper Flagg.
It's reminiscent of the trade for Rudy Gay in 2013 – a Bryan Colangelo gambit, with the former Raptors general manager firmly on the hot seat. Gay was a fringe all-star, talented but flawed, who’s strengths and weaknesses intersected with the best players on the roster. Ultimately, it stunted the growth of Kyle Lowry and, particularly, DeMar DeRozan, and froze the team in mediocrity until Ujiri came in and cleaned up the mess.
Ujiri has always exercised patience, sometimes to a fault. Even the Poeltl trade was made in an effort to keep his post-championship core together a little bit longer. This is not a typical Ujiri move, but we’ve also never seen the long-time executive navigate through a rebuild. Maybe he didn’t have the stomach for it. After missing the playoffs in three of four years and with the impending change in ownership at MLSE, maybe he was feeling the pressure to – as he likes to say – win again in Toronto, and to do it sooner rather than later.
For this gamble to pay off, Ingram will have to get and stay healthy and mesh with the rest of the core; that part is obvious. From there, final judgement on the trade will be contingent on, but not limited to, the answers to the following questions.
How do they manage the rest of the season, especially as it pertains to Ingram’s availability? Not much is known about the nature of his injury or timeline for return. He’s been out since spraining his left ankle in early December. The last status update from the Pelicans was that he would be re-evaluated in two weeks. That was six weeks ago.
As currently constructed, this team is probably too good to bottom out. With better health and a friendlier recent schedule, that had already looked to be the case and now they’re adding Ingram.
There are only four teams below them in the standings (Washington, New Orleans, Utah and Charlotte) but four more teams are within six games (Brooklyn, Philadelphia, Chicago and Portland), all of whom have varying degrees of incentive to tank. Following a tough stretch leading into the all-star break, the Raptors have the NBA’s easiest schedule, meaning it will require some serious roster manipulation to even maintain their current lottery odds. This deal would look a whole lot better if it doesn’t impair their chances of landing a possible difference maker in the top-heavy 2025 draft.
Once Ingram is cleared you would imagine that he’ll want to play and, presumably, the team would want to see how he looks with the others before paying him. But can they do that while also slow playing his return and being selective about the games that he – and the other starters – play down the stretch? Will that even be enough to lose games against the likes of Washington, Utah, Charlotte, Brooklyn and Portland, who make up 10 of Toronto’s final 19 games?
Then, what does Ingram’s next contract look like? One would assume the Raptors have gotten some assurances from the player and his camp before giving up a first-round pick for him. They believe he wants to stay, and at least have a ballpark idea of what it will cost to make that happen.
Ingram surely wants something close to his max, worth roughly $50 million annually. The sense is that Toronto would feel comfortable with something in the $30-35 million range (he’s making $36 million this season). In this scenario, though, the leverage belongs to the player, like it did with Poeltl in the summer of 2023 or OG Anunoby and the Knicks and Siakam and the Pacers last off-season. When a team surrenders meaningful assets for a player’s Bird Rights they’re pot committed, and you can be sure Ingram’s representation (which happens to be Klutch) will make note of that in contract negotiations. By shedding the final year of Olynyk’s deal in the trade, the Raptors should have enough space to make it work while avoiding the luxury tax for next season but, with Barnes’ max extension kicking in, it will be tight.
What might that mean for the future of Barrett, who will be extension eligible in the summer and surely looking for a raise after boosting his stock in Toronto this past year? If this experiment isn’t successful, either on the court or in the spreadsheet, it’s not hard to see him being the first casualty.
On paper, the return for Siakam looks a lot better than it did a year ago. A package of Ingram (acquired for Brown and one of the Pacers’ first-round picks), the much-improved Ochai Agbaji (acquired for Oklahoma City’s 2024 pick, via Indiana) and intriguing rookie Ja’Kobe Walter (drafted with the third pick they got back in that deal) is nothing to scoff at. But it was never about winning that trade and it’s not necessarily about winning this one.
For this to work, it needs to help push the Raptors rebuild – or whatever we’re calling it now – forward. If it doesn’t, they could find themselves back in the unenviable position they were in before it started: the murky middle. Ujiri would have to wear that.