Although they are coming off a 25-win season, the Toronto Raptors are arguably more interesting than they have been in a few years.
The team had ran its course with Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet and OG Anunoby leading the way. Those three players helped the franchise win its first championship and consequently occupy a special place in Raptors history, but changes were needed.
President of basketball operations Masai Ujiri has established himself as one of the top executives in the league by making tough and timely decisions. The trades he made in the past year, namely the one that sent Anunoby to the New York Knicks in exchange for RJ Barrett, Immanuel Quickley and a second-round pick, will determine where this organization is in the next five seasons.
By acquiring young talents who have already shown flashes of promise in the NBA rather than seeking only future draft picks and expiring contracts, Ujiri is trying to initiate a reboot instead of a full rebuild. Regardless of what one calls it, immediate success will be extremely difficult for the Raptors to attain in 2024-25.
Raptors are a tricky team to judge
Scottie Barnes will begin his first full season as the unquestioned face of the franchise, a responsibility he must effectively carry if Toronto is going to avoid an extended stay in NBA purgatory, or worse. He made a tremendous leap forward last season, particularly on offense, but the squad lacked the experience and depth to compete in the Eastern Conference.
An already sub-.500 Raptors squad plummeted in January, an unsurprising consequence of shuffling the roster in the middle of the season. The chemistry should be vastly improved going into the 2024-25 campaign, though.
Head coach Darko Rajakovic should have a more stable situation to manage in his second year, as there will no longer be a sense of uncertainty hovering above the team. He knows what he is working with now, from start to finish. Toronto’s core should be intact all yearlong.
That presumption will be crucial when evaluating the organization's chances for the upcoming season. Since the NBA released its entire schedule last week, it is an appropriate time to take a closer look at this team. With the information given, we will do our best to predict how the Raptors finish in 2024-25 and try to inform fans of what they can expect.
Is a new exciting era of Toronto basketball brewing, or is this still the early stages of a renovation project? The layout of the schedule might actually help answer that ultimate question.
The Raptors will be tested early
The theme last season for the Raptors was making adjustments and transitioning to a new roster structure. Rajakovic and a young, revamped squad learned many tough lessons.
Being forced to drastically alter its strategy and philosophy following the departures of Siakam and Anunoby put the team in an undesirable position. And predictably, undesirable results followed. The Raptors could not successfully adapt to their new reality and proceeded to plunge down the Eastern Conference standings (lost 19 of last 21 games). Although there are rookies and new players coming aboard, a visible growth period should be on the horizon.
The continued presence of veterans like Bruce Brown Jr., Jakob Poeltl and Kelly Olynyk, how ever long it lasts, should benefit the crop of up-and-comers that take a decent amount of space in the locker room. There is talent, promise, skill and experience peppered throughout the group. The problem, though, will be melding it all together.
That yearlong assignment will be particularly challenging to tackle in the beginning of the 2024-25 season. Toronto's first four matchups are against squads that made the postseason in 2023-24 and have conference finals upside. The Cleveland Cavaliers, Philadelphia 76ers, Minnesota Timberwolves and Denver Nuggets all pose serious enough threats that the Raptors' first win may not come until they face the Charlotte Hornets in their fifth game.
A slow start is a severely unpleasant situation for a franchise that ended its last campaign in miserable fashion. Things do not get much easier, as Toronto embarks on a West Coast road trip soon after. In total, 22 of its first 25 games will be versus teams that had winning records the previous year. Yikes.
Toronto has a great opportunity to finish strong
While the schedule will eventually soften, a sour start might make any respite meaningless. But If Scottie Barnes and RJ Barrett can keep the team above the surface by the time March rolls around, the Raptors could be positioned for a late-season eruption.
They battle what are projected to be some of the worst teams in the NBA in the last 12 games of their 2024-25 campaign– Washington Wizards, Detroit Pistons, Chicago Bulls and two matchups each versus the Brooklyn Nets and Hornets. There are obviously no guarantees when one subpar squad faces another, but I deem Toronto to be the best of this bunch. Capitalizing on a favorable homestretch might be what extends its season past game No. 82.
A demanding first month of action, along with a grueling three-game December run against the Oklahoma City Thunder, New York Knicks and Dallas Mavericks, can help prepare Rajakovic's guys for the second half and even accelerate their development.
Formidable competition is exactly what second-year perimeter threat Gradey Dick (36.5 percent 3-point shooter last season), trade acquisition Ochai Agbaji and rookie quartet Ja'Kobe Walter, Jonathan Mogbo, Jamal Shead and Ulrich Chomche need to come of age in The Association. There will be some ugly nights, but they will prove to be worthwhile in the spring, and in the years to come.
Raptors' final record for 2024-25 season
You can tell by now that I am feeling quite optimistic about the trajectory that Raptors hoops is about to take. I see the vision and believe that it will ultimately result in a relevant basketball product coming to fruition in the near future. The 2024-25 season is an important part of that process.
Winning a playoff series is not realistic, and being confined to the NBA basement is simply unacceptable. The Raptors can offer their fans a healthy compromise, one that foretells more growth to come.
Masai Ujiri is banking on Barnes, Barrett and Quickley to push this franchise back into competitive territory in their first full season as a trio. While they prop up Toronto, the youngsters mentioned above will ideally iron out the deficiencies in their games and climb towards their impressive ceilings. Brown and Olynyk will do their part to stabilize everything in between, with the former bringing a burst of energy off the bench and the latter hopefully reclaiming his proficient shooting stroke.
Implementing this formula of varying developmental timetables is a gamble, to be sure, but the potential is apparent. If the Raptors are indeed good enough to play at least one meaningful game in April, then they stand to gain critical experience. A plucky showing in 2024-25 paves the way for legitimate advancement.
And that is what I am predicting. The team will leap above the other Eastern Conference afterthoughts and secure a spot in the Play-In Tournament. It may not be a flashy benchmark to set, but it is one that should be easy for fans to digest this season.
Final record: 37-45 (12 more wins than last season)
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