With Kawhi Leonard Officially Back, the Raptors Are Looking Like a True Contender

Toronto is shaping up to be a real threat in the East once again.

Leonard is back with the Raptors after spending seven years in Los Angeles. | Patrick McDermott/Getty Images

The Raptors made clear last season they should be seen as one of the NBA’s rising teams—and then they added Kawhi Leonard.

Seven years after raising the Larry O’Brien Trophy with Leonard as the roster’s centerpiece, Toronto has rebuilt a contending squad. The foundational piece is Scottie Barnes, an all-world defender who offers tremendous versatility on both sides of the court. Flanking him is a group of strong, rangy role players who can all defend multiple positions and share an ultimate goal of making life abjectly miserable for opposing offenses at every juncture. For several years that made for a good team, but not a great one.

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That would be due to one key ingredient missing from the above recipe: scoring. The Raptors built a great defensive roster behind a relentless focus on acquiring defensive-minded players with high-end athletic traits despite the presence of offensive question marks. Barnes is their greatest success story as a dangerous defender who developed the capability to lead an offense but his skill set on that end, while myriad, is not that of a traditional three-level scorer. The front office took a swing at fixing that last season by acquiring Brandon Ingram and it resulted in a 46-win season, their best record in four years.

But it did not prove enough to broach the upper echelon of contention. Toronto finished as the No. 5 seed in the East with the fifth-ranked defense in the NBA. Yet the offense lagged behind, finishing 15th. By offensive rating it was the best Raptors offense since 2022–23 and a massive jump from the previous year’s unit, which ranked 26th. Yet while Ingram’s 21.5 points per game led the team and earned him an All-Star berth, he couldn’t consistently break down elite defenses. Toronto handled lesser opponents and gave good teams trouble but never found a way to hang with the great teams that could put points on the board against even the Raptors’ thorny group of defenders.

And so the team’s first-round loss to the Cavaliers (during which all those problems materialized) set the stage for an offseason blockbuster trade: landing Leonard in exchange for Ingram, Gradey Dick and draft assets. Originally agreed upon in July, the trade finally went through this month after the Clippers were penalized for cap circumvention.

Leonard is a Raptor again and Toronto is a title contender again.

Kawhi Leonard builds on Raptors’ strengths while compensating for biggest weakness

Scottie Barnes should have a much easier time scoring with Kawhi Leonard next to him. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

From a thousand feet up, the case for optimism around Leonard and the Raptors isn’t complicated to understand.

Toronto took one of the NBA’s best defenses and swapped out arguably the worst defender in the rotation for a former Defensive Player of the Year. Leonard is no longer one of the NBA’s best defenders but he’s still very good, instinctive and experienced on that end. For the purposes of our discussion here, there is no doubt he is miles better than Ingram, who was often attacked as the Raptors’ weakest link. Even at age 35 no team will draw up a game plan to pick on Kawhi freaking Leonard. Just through his presence alone, the Raps fixed one of their few defensive flaws from last season.

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But Leonard isn’t just a great perimeter defender who racked up the sixth-most steals in the NBA last year. He doubles as one of the league’s most well-rounded scoring threats—the perfect salve to what has proved Toronto’s fatal wound every year since he left for Los Angeles.

The superstar wing scored 27.9 points per game for the Clippers last year while shooting over 50% from the field, 38.7% from three and 89.2% from the free throw line. He made 2.6 threes per game and got to the line 6.4 times per game. Just how dangerous was he scoring the ball? Leonard’s advanced numbers say he was on Jalen Brunson’s level as an isolation scorer. Of the five players who scored more points per game, only Shai Gilgeous-Alexander finished with a better shooting percentage from the floor. No matter which way you slice it, Leonard was one of the best scorers in the league last year.

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He isn’t a floor-raiser of the Nikola Jokić or Luka Dončić ilk, nor is he a singularly unstoppable force who will demand MVP votes like SGA. But when you need a bucket, there are very few names you’d mention before getting to Leonard.

Adding him to any team would be a tremendous boon. Adding him to an already elite defensive squad whose Achilles heel was simply the ability to get a bucket when it really matters? It is a perfect match, even before getting into the ripple effects of his presence on the floor. Every shooter in the rotation will have more space to get their shots off than last year because opponents will be so clued in on Leonard. Barnes should be operating with more space than he’s ever enjoyed in his young NBA career and will benefit enormously. At large, everybody on the roster slots into a more ideal role with Leonard out there as a reliable scoring cog around which the offense will operate.

It’s the perfect fit of player and ecosystem.

Toronto’s title case is much stronger, if not quite bulletproof

Leonard’s injury issues loom as a threat to the Raptors’ plans this year. | IMAGN IMAGES via Reuters Connect

A flawless team this is not, however.

Leonard’s injury history looms as the biggest threat to the Raptors’ hopes. Excluding the full season he missed in 2021–22 due to a knee injury, the superstar wing has averaged 23 missed games per year. Two of the last three seasons have been pretty healthy; Leonard played 65 games in the last campaign and suited up for a career-high 68 games in 2023–24. But sandwiched between those two years was a 37-game season.

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It paints a clear picture that one wrong step could sideline Leonard for an extended period of time, at which point the Raptors will be back to square one as a great defensive team that struggles to produce a modern NBA offense. They’ll be glad to have the defense to fall back on but even a hindered Leonard will put Toronto in a familiar position.

There’s also the center situation, a percolating problem for the Raptors these last few seasons. Jakob Poeltl has an $84 million deal, yet Toronto had a better net rating when he was off the floor during the 46 games he suited up for last year. As of now he seems to be the only true seven-footer set to make the final roster, leaving center duties to Barnes and Collin Murray-Boyles otherwise. Both proved quite effective as small-ball fives last campaign but aren’t real bruisers and they’ll feel the pain of trying to battle with the big men of the East over a full game. And if Poeltl’s injury issues act up again (he’s missed at least 25 games per season in each of his three full years in Toronto), the lack of big bodies will prove costly against more physical teams with beef to throw around in the paint.

There aren’t many foolproof title contenders in the modern NBA, though. A different team has emerged as champions in every year since the Raptors last raised the Larry O’Brien Trophy in 2019. Leonard’s addition may not slot Toronto in as favorites ahead of the Knicks in the East or the Spurs/Thunder duo in the West. But you don’t need to have a perfect team to win it all in the parity of today’s league. You just need to be good enough to have a chance, and the Raptors are that.

Make no mistake: Toronto could be a great team this season. At the very least, it’s a squad with enough boxes checked to make a serious championship push. You couldn’t say that about the Raptors prior to Leonard’s flight from L.A. back to the Six.

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