The Raptors Are Making A HUGE Bet On Brandon Ingram This Season

The Raptors Are Making A HUGE Bet On Brandon Ingram This Season

The Toronto Raptors took a big risk when they acquired Brandon Ingram and then gave him a big extension at the trade deadline. But will this gamble pay off this season and in the future? Let’s get into it. Welcome back everybody. This is Amateur Sports, the YouTube channel that is dedicated to giving you Toronto Raptors content and videos and live streams, all this great content on the channel. Make sure you do drop a like if you enjoyed this particular video along the way, but also make sure you’re subscribed to keep up to date with all this great Raptor does content coming at you all off season and beyond. And the discussions around Brandon Ingram have been honestly like kind of negative, I think, in the NBA media sphere after the Raptors acquired him in the trade deadline. They gave away basically expiring contracts and a 2026 first round pick from the Indiana Pacers. The Raptors didn’t give up a lot in order to get him, but the cost was down because his contract was expiring. So, the Raptors pretty much immediately went out, extended him, got him on this $40 million contract, which again was met with a little bit of criticism. Now, wasn’t super surprising to see criticism coming from NBA media personalities in general, but it was a little bit surprising to see almost criticism coming from Brandon Ingram’s agency, Rich Paul and Clutch Sports. Like the the story that came out was that Rich Paul admits that the Raptors gave Brandon Ingram a contract that he would not have gotten elsewhere. kind of strange for an agency to play down like how much a player is worth. But I guess the contract has been signed for Brandon Ingram. It is what it is. There’s nothing we can do about it. Maybe Rich Paul is biging up his agency. Hey, we got him a deal that nobody else was going to give him. We did a great job for our client, but still kind of strange to see. Again, that contract comes out in the end to $40 million per season, but it is $38 million this season, $40 million next season, and then he has a player option in the third year of the contract worth around $42 million. When the contract was signed, I was pretty happy with it. I thought that Brandon Ingram honestly could have gotten a bigger contract, but the consensus around the league and from Brandon Ingram’s agency themselves is that this was more than people were expecting Brandon Ingram to actually receive. But this is kind of always part of the complication for the Raptors. I feel Messiah Jiri, I mean, no longer with the team, but he called trade deadline pretty much pre- agency. So, it’s not free agency, it’s pre- agency because you can trade in order to get this player and then you’re much more likely to be able to sign them as a free agent or in this case the Raptors got him on an extension right away, didn’t want to chance it with free agency, knowing in the past what has happened when they have let a player go into free agency and then another team comes in with a monster off a monster offer that they can’t match. Who knows, maybe if Brandon had gone to free agency, the Rabbs would have offered him the $40 million per year and he would have taken it. Maybe the Raptors didn’t have to trade from from the New Orleans Pelicans, but I find that to be a little bit doubtful. The Raptors have never had success when it comes to free agents. So, I don’t see why it would have started all of a sudden in this summer. So, essentially, the gamble for the Raptors is maybe they slightly overpaid on Brandon Ingram. I certainly don’t feel as though the Brandon Ingram isn’t worth the amount the Rabbs are paying him. It will large largely hinge on how well he played for the Raptors over the course of the season. But I didn’t really feel like this was an overpay for Brandon Ingram, but that’s how it has been taken. But for the Raptors, kind of what they have to do with a lot of players is like it’s difficult for the Raptors to acquire talent, especially in these free agent markets. Like the way the Raptors build their teams are typically through trades, but very prominently through the draft and through development. So, in a way, the Raptors decided they would rather pay more for Brandon Ingram than maybe any other team would in order to have Brandon Ingram on their team rather than having him play on another team. So, is it an overpay? I don’t think so. It’s been considered that, but maybe the Raptors feel like they would have rather overpaid and had Brandon Ingram than underpaid and then not had Brandon Ingram at all. But nonetheless, if the Raptors went above the market consideration for Brandingham, the the market consensus on what his value is worth, they are confident in the player and they felt as though it was worth taking that gamble. It was worth making that huge bet on Brandon Ingram for the team. So, what should Raptors fans actually expect out of Brandon Ingram on the Raptors? Well, let’s take a look at what he produced last season with the New Orleans Pelicans before he got injured. And very clearly it was a a serious ankle injury that hampered him seemingly into the off seasonason. How much of that is the Raptors playing it up as an excuse because they rested him the entire second half of the season? He hasn’t played a game for the Raptors. The worst ankle sprain of all time. So how much the Raptors ham it up so they wouldn’t get in trouble for tanking? I’m not sure. But again, played 18 games overall for the Pelicans. Not a very large sample size, but most of these statistics are very much in line with what he has produced recently in his career. So, it’s pretty fair to still look at these numbers cuz this is what Raptors fans should think of Brandon Ingram as a player. 22 points per game, 5.6 rebounds, 5.2 assists. I think honestly for Brandon Ingram, the playmaking aspect of his game goes a little bit under the radar. He’s a solid passer and a solid playmaker, and that’s good for a Raptors team that has a lot of mouths to feed and a lot of players who want the ball on offense. Efficiency wise, he averaged 46.5% shooting from the field. A very nice 37.4% shooting from three and a true shooting percentage of 56, which can stand to grow maybe a little bit more, but it it it’s decent at 56%. Especially for a player who’s taking the bulk of their shots in mid-range, mid-range shot, not super efficient in the NBA efficiency landscape, in the analytics landscape, but that’s Brandon Ingram’s bread and butter. He’s a good player in these areas. So you give him the green light in those spots. What I think was ultra impressive about his three-point percentage and where it is 37 and a half percent essentially is that typically he’s been a player who takes on about four three-point attempts per game. Just a little bit under four three-point attempts. Over the course of his NBA career, he’s averaged 3.8 three-point attempts per game. Decent efficiency. Again, right around like 36 37%. Decently efficient there. But last season, I know it was just those 18 games, but he was tasked by the New Orleans Pelicans to up that volume and he upgraded it to 6.4 3-point attempts per game and he still maintain this level of efficiency. Again, it’s just a 18 game. So, how real is this? We don’t know. But I’m very sure the Raptors are going to be pushing for him to continue to expand his game beyond the perimeter, take more of these shots on the outside just to enhance the floor space. and the Raptors are very likely going to have some issues with over the course of the season when it comes to their entire roster. So, Brandon taking on more threes will be a welcome site for the Raptors. So, Brandon Ingram, look, he’s had like six or seven seasons now of 20 point per game basketball, 20 plus point per game basketball. He’s been an all-star in that time. If the Pelicans were able to find more oncourt success in that time, I don’t doubt that he could have had more all-star appearances in the end. injuries, maybe a little bit of roster construction and bad luck limited what the Pelicans achieved and how many playoff appearances that they had. But Brandon Ingram has always been an ultra consistent player with what he produces on a year-to-year basis. And I just don’t see that changing all of a sudden with the Raptors. I don’t see it changing all of a sudden, especially in, let’s be honest, a weaker conference here in the Eastern Conference. This is a guy who was able, you know, it’s been a while. It was 2019 2020 he did it. But this is a guy who was able to make an all-star team in the Western Conference. And like I said, maybe he was good enough to make more of the Pelicans and a bit of a better record. How much of that record was influenced by Brandon Ingram not giving enough? Like that’s a good question as well. If Brandon Ingram was so good, would the Pelicans have been better perhaps? But I think again a lot of bad luck with injuries particularly to Zion Williamson. Maybe some poor roster decisions as well kind of played into that. But Brandon Ingram is a a good player. He is a very talented player and it’s tough to bring in players with this level of talent, especially in Toronto and especially for like what the Raptors traded away to get him. Like I mentioned earlier, the Raptors really just didn’t give up a lot to make this happen. So for me, it was a risk worth taking. You you’ve got Brandon Ingram on the team to be your lead offensive engine. You know, Barnes is obviously going to be involved heavily. Maybe that’s like your your engine, the guy in the driving seat, but for your scoring punch, like you’re definitely be looking to Brandon Ingram to be the lead role in providing that scoring punch to your team. Will it amount to team success for the Raptors? Well, you know, we’ve seen win total is projection for the season is right around mid to high30s. So there isn’t this great amount of expectation going into this season for the Raptors, but you know for Ingram I it’s perceived to be this big risk and it is a risk because the Raptors are a team that is paying a lot of money to a lot of players and it’s a team like you know you’re investing this much into a player that hasn’t vaulted you up into a contender, hasn’t vaulted you into this contention status like the Raptors should be pretty happy just to make the playoffs this season. But I don’t think making this bet on Brandon Ingram was a bad decision. I think it was a good decision. Now the work needs to be put in place to build a better team around it to make this a surefire playoff team to get this towards contender status. Difficult to do with the lack of financial flexibility. But but that’s a task you got to take on. I think it was a good bet to take on Brandon Ingram. The riskier side of it is just going to be the term here. How long do you have with Brandon Ingram in order to get this right? Get the players around him. Age-wise, it’s fine. He’s 27 years old, but two plus one deal. Like, the Raptors may need to get some oncourt success quickly before Brandon Ingram has a decision to make in two years if he wants to stay on or if he wants to sign that long-term deal. And would he consider signing that long-term deal with another team? You let me know how you feel about this risk. It’s been perceived as this big risk by the Raptors and it is a risk, but I think it’s a gamble worth taking and a gamble I expect to pay off. And the way it will pay off is just simply Brandon Ingram continuing to play like he has been playing. And if he stays healthy, I can’t see this turning out poorly as a decision to acquire

The Toronto Raptors took a gamble when they acquired Brandon Ingram at the 2025 trade deadline and then gave him an extension which his own agency in Klutch Sports basically described as an overpay. So will the gamble pay off for Bobby Webster’s front office?

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