Will Raptors tank this season? It's looking likely
The Toronto Raptors will not be winning the 2024-25 NBA championship.
This isn’t some bold prediction or even a tame one — it’s just the messaging the team’s players have been putting out.
“We’re definitely capable of winning some games [but] I know that’s not the main focus for us… this has to be a long-term project,” centre Jakob Poeltl told the media on Monday. “I think we all know, we’re not going to go attack the championship this year. It makes no sense for us to try to win every single game as much as we can and sacrifice development in terms of that.”
Toronto has missed the postseason in each of the past two years, finishing the 2023-24 campaign with a disappointing 27-win season that saw them finish 12th in the Eastern Conference.
“I would use the word rebuilding. That’s the right word,” Raptors president Masai Ujiri said. “I think we have a clear path now going forward. I think we set a path [when] we went into the draft last year and got a couple of young players and we want to continue to grow and build this team around Scottie [Barnes], who is 23 years old. So, yes, in sports, you always want to be competitive, and you play to win. We’re going to play to win. But it is a rebuilding team. I think everybody sees that loud and clear.”
But while Poeltl was pretty open about the team not exactly being a championship contender, it isn’t necessarily the line Ujiri wants to hear from his players.
“I don’t want them to talk about rebuilding. That’s me. They should be talking about playing and winning and competing,” Ujiri said, albeit before Poeltl’s comments.
In the 2022-23 campaign, Toronto seemingly had the option to tank for the first overall pick, which ended up being Victor Wembanyama, the French phenom who took the NBA by storm in his first season. But the team decided to double down on their roster, trading for Poeltl and making a postseason push before being ousted by Chicago in the 9/10 seed play-in game.
Last year, Toronto went through a bigger roster overhaul, including two major trades of Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby as well as seeing Fred VanVleet leave in free agency before the season. And if Toronto was reluctant to a rebuild, they were strong-armed into one when the need for change became too great to ignore.
But what about tanking? The 2025 NBA Draft has another phenom expected at the top of it — Duke freshman Cooper Flagg — and Toronto might be better off aiming for a higher shot at winning the draft lottery rather than floating around the midpoint of the league.
The Raptors didn’t explicitly state they’ll be putting out rosters with the intent to lose, but they did basically encourage the fans and media to read between the lines.
“When teams go through this, you go out and set the tone of how you play and how you want the culture of your team to be set,” Ujiri said. “You hope for the best, but we know — we all know — what reality is in this league, and the draft is a way for us to build teams and to acquire players, especially in a market like our market.
Only time will tell exactly how the team’s 82-game season unfolds, but don’t be shocked to be tuning into the draft lottery following the conclusion of this year.
Heading to Montreal for training camp beginning Tuesday, the Raptors are tipping things off on October 23 at home against the Cleveland Cavaliers for their regular season opener.
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