{"id":716180,"date":"2026-04-22T22:09:19","date_gmt":"2026-04-22T22:09:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/716180\/"},"modified":"2026-04-22T22:09:19","modified_gmt":"2026-04-22T22:09:19","slug":"with-a-cold-shooting-brandon-ingram-the-raptors-have-a-first-round-glass-ceiling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/716180\/","title":{"rendered":"With a cold-shooting Brandon Ingram, the Raptors have a first-round glass ceiling"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Toronto Raptors forward Brandon Ingram has shot a combined 8-24 while his team has fallen behind 2-0 in their series against the Cleveland Cavaliers.David Dermer\/Reuters<\/p>\n

When the Toronto Raptors traded for Brandon Ingram \u2013 a soft-spoken, oft-injured, perma-project \u2013 they tied themselves to a vision. <\/p>\n

Their team was young, but now it was complete. Whatever it would develop into, Ingram would be its offensive centrepiece. Whatever promised land they were headed toward, Ingram would lead the way. <\/p>\n

Currently, where the Raptors are headed toward is a dirty weekend in Las Vegas, followed by six weeks of watching other, better teams chase an NBA title. There are a lot of reasons for that. Ingram is just the most obvious. <\/p>\n

At the best of times, Ingram will surprise you with his ability to make hard things look hard. But when the guy you\u2019re counting on to create offence is shooting a combined 8-for-24 in two playoff games, things are hard all over. <\/p>\n

After getting run over in Cleveland, and then backed over a couple more times<\/a>, the Raptors came home to Toronto worse for wear. They took a day off. Then, after a good night\u2019s sleep, they returned to work looking de-energized. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Ingram (left) and the Raptors won all three of their regular season games against the Cavaliers, but those wins came early in the season and before the team traded for star guard James Harden.David Dermer\/Reuters<\/p>\n

A team that thinks it can overcome a 2-0 deficit is loose. On Wednesday, the Raptors were flaccid. A couple of them looked like they wanted to put their head down on the podium and talk that way. <\/p>\n

The head coach was already banging away on the word \u201cyoung\u201d and trumpeting how much all those kids were learning while bent over the Cavaliers\u2019 knee. Ingram, in particular, seemed to have moved beyond grief and arrived at acceptance. <\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m confident that I won\u2019t miss all my shots,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

Now that sounds like winning basketball. Please don\u2019t riot trying to get into the fan zone for Thursday night\u2019s game. There\u2019s going to be plenty of space for everyone. <\/p>\n

The Raptors will lose this series to Cleveland, which is what everyone thought before it started. What\u2019s left to decide is how badly they intend to do so, and what it means going forward. <\/p>\n

If it continues as it has, they have a Brandon Ingram problem. The guy is not young (28) and he\u2019s not inexperienced (10 years in the league). If he isn\u2019t a finished product, he\u2019ll never be one.<\/p>\n

Finished products who are meant to score do so when they must, just as players who defend as an identity do that. If things aren\u2019t working on a particular night, they make changes on the fly. They have the ability to course correct. <\/p>\n

One bad game in the postseason? It happens to everyone. Two in a row? Okay. Sub-optimal, but not unheard of. <\/p>\n

Three? Three means we\u2019re entering DeMar DeRozan territory \u2013 a wonderful regular season player whose hands turn to stone in the playoffs. Remember how that went? <\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are trying to create narrative that is not there,\u201d coach Darko Rajakovic said Wednesday. \u201c[Ingram is] trying really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

First off, whenever a coach starts talking about narratives, you know it\u2019s over. He\u2019s no longer thinking about winning. He\u2019s thinking about how to spin the loss. Your most reliable option \u2013 blame the media.<\/p>\n

Second, no one\u2019s saying the guy isn\u2019t trying. They\u2019re saying the complete opposite, which is worse.<\/p>\n

If Ingram\u2019s not trying, he can start, and things will improve. But if he\u2019s trying, and still chucking up boulders like he\u2019s storming a castle, the Raptors have to have a serious off-season think about what they\u2019ve built here. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

James Harden (left) of the Cleveland Cavaliers has averaged 25 points and seven assists in a pair of wins over the Raptors.Jason Miller\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Scottie Barnes can turn into Scottie Pippen, but if Ingram isn\u2019t able to carry his part of it, the Raptors are never getting any further than they are right now. <\/p>\n

In all likelihood, that will be the case regardless. The NBA is built on teams that have overlapping layers of superstar-level talent, built through elite draft picks and\/or free-agent coups. <\/p>\n

The Raptors don\u2019t have any elite drafts in their future. They don\u2019t pull free-agent coups any more. They are what they are right now \u2013 a competent, often fun-to-watch team that is never going to scare anyone serious. <\/p>\n

In Toronto, maybe that\u2019s enough. The franchise went 25 years without threatening to win a title, and never had a problem selling seats.<\/p>\n

The one wrinkle was the one year they did win. Has that permanently reset expectations? Can this club be perpetually mediocre again and expect to be loved? All you can say for certain is it\u2019s probably best not to find out. <\/p>\n

That means selling people on the idea that things are getting better, even if they\u2019re not. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Cleveland Cavaliers guard Donovan Mitchell (45) talks with guard James Harden (1) during the first half during a game against the Toronto Raptors.David Dermer\/Reuters<\/p>\n

That further means that Thursday\u2019s Game 3 against the Cavaliers isn\u2019t a must-win in the traditional sense. Nobody actually thinks Toronto is coming back to win this series. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s a must-win in terms of next year, and the year afterward. The Raptors need to convince their fans that they are a growing concern. That means winning a game after it looks like you\u2019ve given up. <\/p>\n

If they blow Thursday, there\u2019s still Game 4 on Sunday. That\u2019s a 1 p.m. start after a Saturday night off and James Harden is on the Cavaliers. Every night club in the city probably has an alarm going off in the manager\u2019s office: \u2018Battle stations. Battle stations.\u2019 <\/p>\n

Just get it back to Cleveland for one more game \u2013 that\u2019s the Raptors\u2019 goal for the year now. Even if they end up refusing to come out of the locker room for the second half of that game, it\u2019s something you can lie about afterward by saying you can build on. <\/p>\n

Getting swept is a worse case. Getting swept while Ingram is unable to shoot his hat size, that is the worst case. <\/p>\n

That would be admitting that you\u2019re out of ideas, and have neither the cap space nor the conceptual space to come up with new ones.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Toronto Raptors forward Brandon Ingram has shot a combined 8-24 while his team…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716181,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3770],"tags":[7,6,45555,681,50186,680,476,3820],"class_list":{"0":"post-716180","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto-raptors","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-noastack","11":"tag-raptors","12":"tag-topstory","13":"tag-toronto","14":"tag-toronto-raptors","15":"tag-torontoraptors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116450647302036781","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=716180"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716180\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}