Toronto Raptors

An expansion side that became a national team

The franchise was granted on 4 November 1993 for an expansion fee of 125 million US dollars, and played its first game on 3 November 1995, arriving alongside the Vancouver Grizzlies in a two-city Canadian experiment that only half survived. The first four seasons were played in the SkyDome, a baseball stadium with basketball bolted into one corner; the club moved to the Air Canada Centre, now Scotiabank Arena, in 1999.

Vince Carter, acquired in a draft-day trade in 1998, turned an expansion curiosity into a team people bought tickets for. Toronto reached the playoffs in 2000, 2001 and 2002, and in 2001 won its first postseason series, beating New York before losing the conference semi-final to Philadelphia. Carter was traded to New Jersey in 2004 and the club spent most of the following decade adrift. His number 15 remains the only one the team has retired.

Ujiri, the DeRozan trade and the title

Masai Ujiri arrived as general manager in 2013 and built around Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, producing five division titles between 2014 and 2020 and a run of playoff teams that kept losing to Cleveland. In the summer of 2018 he traded DeRozan to San Antonio for Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green, a deal that was unpopular in the room and vindicated within a year. Marc Gasol was added before the 2019 trade deadline.

Toronto won the 2019 NBA Finals against Golden State, the only championship in the franchise's history and the first won by a team based outside the United States. Leonard left for the Clippers that summer after a single season. The parade and the crowd it drew are still the reference point every subsequent Raptors team is measured against, which is part of the problem the current group has been working under.

The rebuild, and the summer the president was let go

What followed was a long unwinding: Lowry gone, Pascal Siakam traded, and a roster rebuilt around Scottie Barnes, who signed a rookie maximum extension worth 224.2 million US dollars over five years. Darko Rajakovic was hired as head coach in 2023 and spent two seasons coaching a team that was, by design, not trying to win very many games.

The rebuild outlasted the man who started it. On 27 June 2025, one day after the NBA draft, Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment ended Ujiri's 13-year tenure. Chief executive Keith Pelley said Ujiri had helped transform the organisation on the court and had been an inspirational leader off it, and that the club under general manager Bobby Webster had a plan in place for the following season and beyond. Pelley later said the two had spoken at the beginning of that month and that Ujiri asked for any change to come after the draft so the process would not be disrupted. Webster has run basketball operations since.

46-36, and seven games with Cleveland

The 2025-26 season was the payoff. Toronto finished 46-36, third in the Atlantic and fifth in the East, reaching the playoffs for the first time since 2022. Brandon Ingram, acquired the previous February and finally healthy, led the scoring at 21.5 points a game. Barnes played all 82 games and averaged 18.1 points and 7.5 rebounds; Immanuel Quickley added 16.4 points and 5.9 assists, and RJ Barrett averaged 19.3 in 57 appearances. Barnes and Ingram were both named All-Stars, and Rajakovic coached Team World at the 2026 All-Star Game.

The season produced two results that will outlive it. On 28 December 2025, against Golden State, Barnes posted 23 points, a career-high 25 rebounds and 10 assists, the 23rd player in NBA history to reach that line. On 26 March 2026, Toronto ran off 31 unanswered points against Orlando over more than seven minutes, the largest unanswered run recorded in the play-by-play era since 1996-97, in a 139-87 win. In between, on 12 January, Scotiabank Arena chanted for Kyle Lowry until Philadelphia put him on the floor, and gave him a standing ovation for a scoreless shift in what was likely his last appearance there.

The first round in April went the distance. Toronto lost the opening two games in Cleveland 126-113 and 115-105, won both at home 126-104 and 93-89, lost game five, forced a seventh game with a 112-110 overtime win, then lost game seven 114-102. Rajakovic was given a multi-year extension after it.

The trade that sat on the shelf for ten weeks

The Leonard deal was agreed at the end of June 2026 and then went nowhere. The league was investigating the Clippers over salary-cap circumvention connected to Leonard's time in Los Angeles, specifically impermissible benefits including 28 million US dollars routed through what the NBA treated as a no-show job. Until that closed, nothing could be signed.

The findings landed in early September. The Clippers were stripped of five first-round picks covering 2029 to 2033; owner Steve Ballmer was fined 30 million US dollars and suspended for a year; team president Lawrence Frank was suspended six months without pay and Gillian Zucker a year; Leonard was fined 700,000 US dollars, and his uncle Dennis Robertson was barred from future NBA business. Leonard's public response was that he was focused on what he could control, closing the chapter and moving forward with a clean slate. The trade cleared league approval on 15 September 2026, with Los Angeles receiving Ingram, Gradey Dick, unprotected first-round picks in 2031 and 2033, a 2027 swap and second-rounders in 2030 and 2033.

Leonard is 35 and averaged 27.9 points in 65 games for the Clippers last season, his best scoring year in some time; he has one season and 50 million US dollars left on his contract, with extension talks reported. At the practice facility on 16 September he said his son was born in Toronto and had been asking when he would come back, and deflected the leadership question: if it is Scottie's team, it is his team, and he would do whatever it took to help them win. Webster called his impact on the organisation, the city and the country undeniable. Camp opens in Quebec City on 29 September, with the first pre-season game there against Miami on 3 October. Rajakovic finalised his staff this month, adding Stephen Silas to Pat Delany and Jama Mahlalela on the front bench.

Scotiabank Arena on a game night

The building holds up to 19,800 for basketball, sits at 40 Bay Street next to Union Station and connects to the underground PATH, so most of the crowd arrives by train and walks in under cover. The 82-game schedule runs to 11 April 2027, with the home opener against Chicago on 21 October at 7.30pm and most other home dates at the same time, a handful moved to afternoon or early-evening starts for broadcast.

The outdoor side of it returned last spring. For the 2026 playoffs the club reopened the Maple Leaf Square tailgate outside Gate 6 for every game, home and away, showing them on the big screen with live programming, giveaways and guests, free to attend. It is the part of the operation that photographs best and the part visitors tend to ask about first.