Leo Tolstoy opened Anna Karenina with his famous “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” This has widespread application. Jared Diamond used is as a series of necessary conditions to explain why so few animals have been domesticated. And, of course, it explains why in modern basketball good NBA teams all share so many qualities. The Toronto Raptors are about to join those ranks this upcoming 2026-27 season.
Good teams in the NBA need plenty of qualities. They need star talent and shooting and defence and yada yada. That stuff is known. Just as significant is that the best teams need to be able to play in a variety of ways. Why did the Utah Jazz with Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert always flame out in the playoffs? Why do the Cleveland Cavaliers with Donovan Mitchell do the same? Why did the Boston Celtics get smashed last season in the playoffs? In part because all of those teams played one very, very dominant way in the regular season and failed to adapt when the meatgrinder of the playoffs took it away.
The Raptors have spent more than half a decade (2020-2026) with one pitch. Sometimes that pitch was extremely good and sometimes extremely bad. But the team has largely been defined by one route to success — and this is despite having multiple head coaches scheme a variety of different offences and defences. That has resulted in zero NBA playoff series wins.
This upcoming season projects to finally give the Raptors a bevy of pitches under their command.
First and foremost, the Raptors can play with devastating size. This has been true for some time; the Raptors finished fourth last season in points in the paint. Led by Scottie Barnes, Jakob Poeltl (when healthy), Collin Murray-Boyles (especially in the playoffs), and RJ Barrett, the Raptors had an arsenal of wings, forwards, and bigs last season who cut and passed into the paint to pound smaller opponents under the basket. Barrett, as has been the case for a few seasons now, was made far more valuable to the Raptors because he was one of the team’s only self-creators who actually drove to the rim. Barnes practically doubled his drives in the playoffs and proved to be, when everyone was trying as hard as possibly, simply an unstoppable force.
That should be even truer this upcoming season. Though Brandon Ingram last season and Kawhi Leonard in his career take similar shots, Leonard takes shorter mid-rangers and reaches them with far more physicality and consistency. He is much more consistent when he does reach the paint. He is just generally bigger and stronger. Size will continue to be one of the Raptors’ strengths.
But with Leonard on board, the Raptors should be able to do much more than simply play big and strong.
In fact, and likely for the first time in a long time, the Raptors should be able to actually play small and reap the benefits of playing small at the same time. In the modern NBA, teams play small to ramp up pace and shooting. The Raptors just haven’t had the shooting on the roster to actually do that, even if they have benched their centers. Barnes remains a spotty shooter when he ramps down to center (though I think he should have a really positive shooting year), so the Raptors don’t get much spacier with him at the five. Ditto for Murray-Boyles.
But Barnes is a generational defender, and when he slots in at the five, he gives Toronto insane court coverage at the big spot without taking away schematic versatility. Barnes can play drop coverage like a proper center. He can not only switch onto guards, but actually start possessions on them (and even entire playoff series against them). He can play in gaps and help at the rim when offences play away from him. Barnes at center is a defensive nightmare.
But previously, the Raptors haven’t been able to clean the glass with Barnes at center. Leonard — one of the best defensive rebounders at his size in league history — will help tremendously there. Allen Graves can help the defensive stability while still ramping up the turnover forcing that benefits small lineups by getting out in transition. It also helps that both should be plus shooters on the offensive end.
When the Raptors want to play small, they can use Jamal Shead to dial up offensive pace, Barnes and Leonard to hold down the defence and rebounding, and Graves to do all of the above without commanding usage. Murray-Boyles could help the defence, or Alijah Martin could help as a shooter and tenacious defender. There are far more options this year in terms of small-ball lineups that don’t sacrifice on the offensive or defensive end.
And if the Raptors want to dial up the offence, there shouldn’t generally be a defensive dropoff that goes along with it. Barrett, Ingram, and Immanuel Quickley were relatively impossible to play together on the defensive end. The offence made sense, but none of the three had positive regular seasons when guarding the ball, and only Quickley was strong as a connective defender. But with Leonard on board, Barrett and Quickley make much more sense together as a defensive pairing that can be supported by monsters in the gaps. That trio had a defensive rating of 117 with all three together (bad) and 113 with just Barrett and Quickley and no Ingram (tolerable). (The offence in those situations stayed the same, and again: with Leonard on board, that offence should be supercharged.)
When Toronto wants to dial up pull-up 3-point shooting, Quickley and Leonard give the Raptors two legitimate options there. When it wants to win the possession battle, it can do so without sacrificing offence. When it wants to get out in transition, it doesn’t lose rebounding.
The Raptors changed little this offseason, in terms of number of players on the roster who remain the same. But the swap of Ingram for Leonard gives the team a host of new identities that don’t undercut the ones that already existed. Adding Graves helps in small but numerous ways, especially if his jumper (true in college and in Summer League) remains operational. Murray-Boyles seems incredibly primed for a jump in role, in minutes, in output, especially after his star turn in the playoffs.
Toronto is very much facing a glass-half-full roster coming into this season after so many players’ improvements in the playoffs. And that is without considering the addition of Leonard, who changes everything. Toronto can finally play a variety of different styles without making sacrifices elsewhere.
That is a necessary condition for success. The last time the Raptors had that quality was arguably 2018-19, the last time Leonard was on board. We know how that ended. Flexibility is not, of course, a sufficient condition for success. It won’t cause it. The Raptors are not guaranteed to win the championship or anything like it. But they are closer than they have been in a long, long time. And the longer you gaze at the roster and its strengths, the more you realize that it looks like every other successful team in the NBA.