A year ago, the Raptors were trying to get back into the playoffs conversation. They did exactly that. Toronto went 46-36, grabbed the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference and made the playoffs for the first time in four years. The season eventually ended in Cleveland, but not before the Raptors pushed the Cavaliers all the way to Game 7.
Now the bar is higher. Nobody will be satisfied with simply making the playoffs this time around. The Raptors are expected to add Kawhi Leonard to a team that was already good enough to win 46 games, and that changes the conversation heading into 2026-27.
So, what does this season look like if things go right? What if they don’t? And what happens if things go really, really poorly?
The Good: The Raptors make a serious run
Let’s say everything clicks. The defence stays elite. Scottie Barnes takes another step. Kawhi Leonard stays healthy and puts up MVP numbers once again. The younger players continue to grow. Well, suddenly, 50 wins doesn’t seem crazy. Toronto hasn’t reached the 50-win mark since 2019, the season after the franchise won its first championship. And yes, Leonard was the best player on that team, too.
It’s hard not to get excited about what the defence could look like. The Raptors finished fifth in the NBA in defensive rating last season at 113.25. Since 1981, 28 of the 46 NBA champions have finished in the top five in defensive rating. And the defence should be a fair amount better this upcoming season.
Toronto already has a great defensive foundation with Scottie Barnes, Jamal Shead, Collin Murray-Boyles and Ja’Kobe Walter. Now throw in one of the best defenders ever, in Leonard and rookie Allen Graves, who had a phenomenal Summer League, and things get even better.  That’s a group that can make teams work for every possession and wreak havoc on that end of the floor. With the number of turnovers this group will force, Toronto will make a living in transition. Leonard will help far more both in forcing transition attempts and in converting them than Brandon Ingram did last season. He’s a fantastic defensive rebounder, too, which is another area in which the Raptors could use the boost.
The East is going to be a grind. There are plenty of teams that believe they belong in the playoff picture, but Toronto has something a lot of those teams don’t: a young core that has already had a taste of playoff basketball and a former Finals MVP coming through the door.
We’ve seen how quickly things can change. Detroit went from the sixth seed in 2025 to the No. 1 seed in 2026. The Raptors don’t need to make that exact jump, but there’s no reason they can’t move up the standings.
The ultimate good-case scenario, of course, would end with another banner hanging over the court of Scotiabank Arena. However, a more realistic goal would look like 50-plus wins and a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals.
Of course, they could win it all. Having Leonard and Barnes gives Toronto two players you can feel comfortable putting the ball in the hands of when a playoff game gets tight. We know Leonard can drag an otherwise-imperfect offence over the top. And this defence projects to truly be one of the best in the league; the forced turnovers could bolster a solid offence into a great one. That’s a formula that could do it all.
But it’s important to note that Toronto still has a lot of young players who are barely getting started in the postseason. Getting to the third round would be a major step.
The Bad: Kawhi doesn’t give them what they expected
This is where the Leonard gamble becomes a little scary. Toronto made it clear what it wants to do. The Raptors want to win now. Bringing Kawhi back isn’t a move you make to improve from 46 wins to 48. The idea is that he can help turn a team that was already competitive into one that can actually make noise in the playoffs.
But what happens if he can’t stay on the floor? That’s a problem. The Raptors took Cleveland to seven games last season without Leonard. So if Kawhi misses time, Toronto isn’t suddenly becoming one of the worst teams in the East. They should still be a playoff team, but that’s not the standard anymore.
If Leonard spends another season battling injuries and isn’t available when the games matter most, the whole thing starts to feel like a missed opportunity. Toronto already knows this group can get to the postseason without him. They brought him back to find out what this group can do with him.
If the answer ends up being another first-round exit, that’s going to sting. Especially if the reason is that their biggest offseason addition wasn’t healthy enough to make the difference everyone expected him to make.
The Ugly: Back to the lottery
This is a nightmare scenario. Toronto falls apart. The wins disappear, the young guys don’t take the jumps the team is counting on, and suddenly the Raptors are back in the lottery. Perhaps Leonard is injured, and maybe it’s not just Leonard. If he misses most of the season, and Poeltl’s back health declines, it’s easy to see overwork forcing other Raptors to the sidelines. Barnes has had hand injuries, and Murray-Boyles’ thumbs are at great risk based on his style of play.
Jamal Shead needs to show he can become a bigger part of the rotation when defences are game-planning much more specifically to force him to score rather than pass. Ja’Kobe Walter needs to take another step. Collin Murray-Boyles needs to show why Toronto invested so heavily in him. If none of that happens, the Raptors could end up stuck. And being stuck is probably the worst place an NBA team can be.
Then there’s the money situation that could cause a big dent. Toronto still has some huge contracts on the books, and Jakob Poeltl is the obvious example. If the Raptors are struggling and those contracts aren’t movable, it becomes even harder to change the roster. Especially with much of Toronto’s draft assets out the door (theoretically) in exchange for Leonard. (Who, in this scenario — and all, given the chronological nature of our experience of time — isn’t getting any younger.)
Where does Toronto land?
The good, bad and ugly versions of this Raptors season are pretty different. The good is a team that finally takes the next step: 50 wins, another playoff series win and a trip to the Eastern Conference Finals.
The bad is a team that makes the playoffs but can’t get much further because the Kawhi reunion experiment doesn’t work the way Toronto hoped.
The ugly is the complete collapse: a return to the lottery, little development from the young players and a roster that’s still difficult to reshape.
The good news for Toronto? The best-case scenario feels much more realistic than it did a year ago. After four straight seasons, prior to the last one, without playoff basketball, that’s a pretty good problem to have.