This Is What We Learned About The Raptors At 2025 Summer League

This Is What We Learned About The Raptors At 2025 Summer League

The Toronto Raptors impressed at Summer League making it all the way to the semifinals. But what did we really learn about the team in these five games? Let’s get into it. Hello everybody and welcome back to MHR Sports. This is the YouTube channel that is dedicated to giving you Toronto Raptors content and videos like this and live streams on the channel. Drop a like if you enjoyed this one along the way and subscribe for more content just like it all offseason. Today we’re focusing on the Raptors and their summer league where they made the semi-finals for the first time in their history. This is the furthest that they have gone and they really made a push to potentially go all the way after being the one seed through those four grading games. As much as the Raptors were impressive with four wins and just that one loss in the semi-finals across summer league, there was a lot that we learned about this team. So, here are the three biggest things that I took away from the Raptors and their time at Summer League. And the first thing I think was probably the most obvious thing, probably the biggest thing that we saw from this team. It it was just a culture with this team. And I think that it’s important here because a lot of the players featuring for the Raptors in summer league, which made it such a good summer league team. A lot of the players featuring in summer league for the Raptors are going to have very prominent roles on the Raptors in the NBA this season. And we really saw the culture that the Raptors are trying to instill kind of start to take shape here. You know, obviously there’s other players that need to be involved, you know, like the like the starters in Manuel Cookie, RJ Barrett, Scotty Barnes, Brendingham, Yaka Purle, guys like Grady Dick as well, Oce Abaji a little bit as well. Like more players obviously need to buy into this. But again, we got a glimpse of this culture that the Raptors have clearly been trying to instill within their team for the past couple of years. Adding on this grit, adding on this toughness, adding on this real dogged mentality like players like Jamal Shed really embody all those traits. I’ve talked about that previously, but that real culture was brought into the frey. And I think a lot of that culture really showcases itself on the defensive end of the floor. For a long time, the Raptors in the NBA were known for their defense first approach, winning games with defense. And you know, the term defense wins championships, like that was on very good display in 2019 when the Raptors won their first and only NBA championship. We saw a lot of that with summer league. It felt like the defense would maybe bring the Raptors to their first ever summer league championship as well because defensively they were outstanding. They wounded their opponents to just about 89 points per game. Fantastic. I know it’s a 40-minute game, but still that was great to see from the Raptors. They forced almost 28 turnovers per game to go with that as well. They did such a fantastic job of turning defense into offense. That was Toronto’s bread and butter all throughout the summer league process. It was great to see. It made for a very entertaining watch. Like I usually just enjoy summer league in general, like learning about some of the new players, seeing some of the rookie players for the first time, but I really enjoyed watching this Raptors team in Summer League 4. like all this this this culture shift that’s starting to take place and and this defensive mentality that they brought to proceedings. What a fantastic job by James Wade, head coach of the summer league team in doing that. Like you saw whenever there was a big play, the entire Raptors bench was on their feet. Everybody was hyped up for the run that they went on. It was so great to see just the culture being we have the seed of the culture being planted with this team. But second thing unfortunately that we have as a takeaway is a negative thing, big positive with the culture that was brought in and that defense. Like I said, the Raptors rode that defense to a lot of wins, but we also learned about some of the offensive struggles that are still plaguing this team. Now, obviously, this is summer league, but some of the lineups that we saw in that summer league were like some of those lineups are going to be pretty much the Raptors bench for some of the games in the NBA this season. And for a lot of the players here, there’s still just a lack of offensive production overall. So, I am a little bit fearful of potential bench units. Like, Darko has consistently still tried to go with these four plus one lineups. I I call that I call them four plus one lineups. It’s when there’s four bench players on and one starter on. Usually, that starter is Scotty Barnes. And again, he’s accompanied by four bench players. And it just feels like when these lineups come in, it it it just tanks the Raptors and what they’re doing in that game. They just so difficult for the Raptors to battle through it. It’s just not as talented enough of a bench. I think that there’s a lot of really good players on this bench and we’ll touch on that in a second, but I don’t think it’s a very topheavy bench. Like I think there’s like 12, 13 like quality NBA players deep for this bench. It’s just not super topheavy and there’s not a lot of offense being produced out of this group. like playing against other summer league competition, the statistics offensively weren’t very good to see. Like yes, they did average 95 points per game, but they also shot under 43% from the field over the course of those five games in summer league, and the shooting from three, like the Raptors shot less than 29% from three in summer league. I hope I I hope I had these statistics. I I I scraped as best I could. I hope I had these accurate, but at the very least, they’re pretty close. 43% from the field, 29% from three, leaving a little bit to be desired, especially in that semi-finals game against the Sacramento Kings. And I know it’s such a small sample size, but still, even in that semi-finals against the Sacramento Kings, when the Kings were slightly in the advantage to the turnover battle, they were absolutely demolishing the Raptors. They were up by 20 points at one point. Then late in the game, when the turnover battle started to really shift back in our favor, that’s when the Raptors got back in the game. As much as there was some good offense to help them do that, most of that offense was generated by continuing to get those extra possessions. So, if the Raptors weren’t dominating the possession battle, they were not dominating in the scoreboard. Now, how this relates to the NBA, it’s just like we’ve seen this happen with the Raptors previously, and I’m just a little bit worried that this summer league was the trailer for the featurelength film that could be the NBA regular season. Just something to consider there. You know, I have a lot of faith in the offense from the lot of the starting unit, but the bench, you know, just as worry is kind of settling in that maybe there isn’t quite the offense we need out of that bench unit. The defense will be there, but will we get enough offensive production? something to consider as well, especially for head coach Dark Rayakovich in figuring out the rotation. Will we finally start to see a limit on the amount of minutes we see four bench players on the court at once? If I had it my way, it would be three bench players on the court at a maximum. But the final thing that we’re going to take away here is that this was a talented summer league team. Like very easily in the end that Sacramento Kings game could have gone the other way. Sacramento probably deserved to win that game in the end. They ended up losing the final to the Charlotte Hornets, but the Raptors could have made that comeback. They got up to within one possession a couple times late in the game, so they had their opportunities to get to the final and whatnot. Like, it was a good team. There were a lot of good players. It It was such a good team that a player as talented as AJ Lawson was coming off the bench for this Raptors team. And AJ Lawson, who was fantastic and coming off the bench in summer league, is a player that I think right now is in line to be the last player on the Raptors’ 15-man main roster. like a player as talented as that is going to be the last player on the Raptors roster. Whereas in like in previous years, the Raptors I mean there’s been an occasion where the Raptors just don’t have a 15th player on the roster because they just feel like they don’t need it. AJ Lawson clearly showcased with the Raptors last year and has done in the past with the Dallas Mavericks that he’s a capable NBA player and that’s your 15th guy. This kind of showcase that there is a lot of talent here. Again, I’m not saying it’s topheavy, but I think it it goes very deep. Like if we’re if we were in a league where you needed a full 15-man unit on a night-to-ight basis, the Raps would be a pretty damn good team because their team goes stretches very long. So, what that’s going to do is cause a lot of competition for those rotation spots come the season. That’s my takeaway here. There are going to be players you like and players you think are good who on like a night-to-ight basis are just not going to play at all. DNPCD did not play coach’s decisions. Players like Jonathan Mo who was okay at summer league. Is he going to have that spot solidified for him in rotation? Especially after the Raptors have made a signing of a big in Sandro Mamu Khalesi. Jacobe Walter I would have thought would struggle to get in rotation with players like Abaji and Grady Dick potentially ahead of him in the wing positions. But Walter was so good in summer league that I feel like he has to be in rotation. Does that now bump somebody like Oce Abaji out of it? Potentially. Colin Murray Boils, our ninth overall pick, had his moments in summer league, but is he going to be able to crack the rotation out of the gate? Will he have to spend some time with the Raptors 905? You know, all these things are fine. Like, it’s good to have this competition, you know, guys like Jameson Battle as well, you wonder, is there a spot in rotation for him? People like him. He’s a good player, but is there a spot in rotation for him? This competition is good. I think it’s healthy and it will drive a lot of the players on this team to be better, but just brace yourself for the fact that there are going to be good players out of rotation and potentially good players like Colin Marray Boles who will need some time in G-League. Again, if you’re out of rotation, you’re going to work harder to get into rotation. If you’re in the G- League, you’re going to get some great development reps to step back up to the NBA, and that could be a good thing for a players’s career as well. So, the biggest things, culture and defense, fantastic offense still leaving me with a slight seat of doubt in what they can do in the NBA. Hopefully, I’m wrong on that. And finally that rotation it is going to be ultra competitive to actually

The Toronto Raptors have wrapped up Summer League with their first ever appearance in the semi-final of the competition but what did we really learn about the team? Some of it is good but some of it is not..

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0:00 – The Toronto Raptors put on a show at NBA Summer League 2025
0:50 – Defensive culture
3:20 – Offensive doubt
6:36 – The Raptors’ rotation will be tough to crack
9:28 – In summary

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