Toronto Raptors heading to Europe on team trip next month
The Toronto Raptors are going global once again.
The NBA’s lone non-American franchise is heading to Spain for a team training session, as reported by Sportsnet’s Michael Grange.
“The next step is a team-wide mini-camp in Madrid during the first week of August,” Grange wrote. “The Raptors will be training at the leading-edge facilities enjoyed by one of the richest clubs in European sports, Real Madrid.”
While most NBA offseason workouts are handled by the players themselves, often in small groups spread across the world, teams often reconvene for a week or so throughout the summer to check in on their players.
Where have the Raptors gone before?
It’s the second year in a row that the Raptors have taken a group visit to Spain. A year ago, they travelled to Malaga, where they visited the Embassy Training Centre.
It’s also a callback to a longstanding partnership between the two teams. Toronto and Real Madrid played in a series of exhibition games in 2007 and 2012, splitting the results.
The franchise has played three regular-season games in London, England, two preseason games in Japan and one in Italy throughout its history.
The Raptors will reconvene in Toronto in late September as a full unit again, meeting the media before going on a bit of a cross-country tour. They’ll hold their training camp in Calgary before heading off to Vancouver for a preseason game against the Denver Nuggets.
The Raptors are coming off a 30-52 season, where they finished 11th in the Eastern Conference.
“I think it was a good season for us. Year one of the rebuild. Now it’s time for the next chapter, and it’s time for us to take the next step,” Toronto head coach Darko Rajakovic told reporters at his end-of-season media availability. “We want to position the [Raptors] to be a contender, to win championships for a stretch of 10 years.”
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