Toronto Raptors

Toronto Raptors, Canadian professional basketball team based in Toronto that plays in the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Raptors have won one conference title and one NBA championship (both 2019).

The Raptors joined the NBA in 1995 as an expansion team alongside the Western Conference’s Vancouver Grizzlies. The two expansion teams were the first NBA franchises based in Canada. (An earlier team, the Toronto Huskies, played in the Basketball Association of America—one of the forerunners of the NBA—during the 1946–47 season.) The Raptors finished in last place in their division in each of their first three seasons in the league. Toronto acquired its first superstar, guard-forward Vince Carter, in a 1998 draft-day trade. A five-time All-Star for Toronto, Carter helped the franchise reach its first playoff berth, during the 1999–2000 season. In 2000–01 the Raptors again qualified for the postseason and advanced to the conference semifinals, a dramatic seven-game loss to the eventual conference champion, the Philadelphia 76ers. After a winning campaign that ended in a first-round postseason elimination in 2001–02, Toronto entered into a four-year stretch of losing seasons, which was marked by the trade of the disgruntled Carter in 2004.

The Raptors returned to the postseason in 2006–07, with a team featuring standout center-forward Chris Bosh, but were knocked out in the opening round of the playoffs in both that season and the following, and the franchise subsequently failed to post winning records. In 2010 Bosh left the team in free agency, prolonging the rebuilding process.

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The 2013–14 season saw the team stage a stunning turnaround as it rebounded from a last-place divisional finish the previous season to win the second division title in team history. The Raptors won another division crown in 2014–15, but the team was swept out of the postseason in its opening-round series. In 2015–16 Toronto, led by All-Star guards Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan, won 56 games and advanced to the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in team history, where the Raptors were eliminated by the Cleveland Cavaliers. The Raptors earned a franchise-record fourth straight playoff appearance in 2016–17 but were swept by the Cavaliers in the teams’ second-round postseason series. In 2017–18 the Raptors set a team record with 59 victories and had the best record in the Eastern Conference for the first time in franchise history. Despite Toronto’s stellar regular-season performance, the team once again faltered against the Cavaliers in the playoffs, losing all four games of the teams’ second-round series.

Searching for a way to finally break through in the following offseason, the Raptors traded franchise icon DeRozan to the San Antonio Spurs in a deal that brought versatile wing Kawhi Leonard in return. The trade was considered risky since Leonard had only one year remaining on his contract and had feuded with the Spurs for the better part of the previous year. However, Leonard was an ideal addition to the Raptors, as he teamed with Lowry seamlessly and led Toronto to the first conference championship in franchise history in 2018–19. Toronto then stunned the heavily favored two-time defending NBA champion Golden State Warriors in the finals, winning a hard-fought six-game series to capture the Raptors’ first championship.

That championship-winning roster was short-lived as Leonard departed Toronto in free agency. The team regrouped around Lowry and rising forward Pascal Siakam in the 2019–20 season, finishing with a 53–19 record and returning to the playoffs, where the Raptors lost in the second round. During the COVID-19-shortened 2020–21 season the team played their home games in Tampa, Florida, because of Canadian travel restrictions related to the pandemic. Amid those the difficult circumstances, the Raptors struggled to a 27–45 record, and Lowry was traded in the offseason. In 2021–22 Toronto was bolstered by the promising play of newly drafted forward Scottie Barnes, who won Rookie of the Year, and returned to the playoffs, losing in the first round. Midway through the following season Siakam was traded, and Toronto began to rebuild the team around Barnes.