Kawhi Leonard's Impact on Raptors' 2026-27 Season
The Kawhi Leonard file first, because that’s the cloud hanging over everything else.
With training camp less than three weeks away, Leonard is still, on paper, a Los Angeles Clipper. The franchise has been hammered: five draft picks stripped, a $30 million fine, and looming suspensions for owner Steve Ballmer and his top two executives after the NBA’s salary-cap circumvention investigation. Leonard’s personal penalty? A $700,000 fine — a slap compared to what he gained from the sham endorsement deals the Clippers arranged.
Of course Ballmer’s furious. Of course it stings that Leonard can walk out of the wreckage and into what’s expected to be a lucrative extension with the Toronto Raptors.
But around the league, the temperature on this specific deal is calm. The belief remains that the trade sending Leonard to Toronto and Brandon Ingram and Gradey Dick to Los Angeles gets done. The holdup is procedural: the Clippers still need to formally appoint a team governor and a lead basketball executive to sign off. Until that’s in place, an agreement reached back on June 30 just sits in limbo.
The fundamentals haven’t changed. The Clippers are desperate for draft capital; the Raptors are offering what no one else would: two unprotected firsts, a first-round swap and two seconds. Leonard has made it clear Toronto is where he wants to sign his extension. That alone scares off rival bidders who don’t want to pay a premium for what would likely be a one-year rental.
It also helps that Trent Redden, the Clippers general manager expected to become the lead decision-maker with Lawrence Frank suspended for six months, is the same executive who steered the Raptors-Clippers talks in the first place.
So the expectation stays the same: Leonard to Toronto, timing to be determined.
Raptors at a crossroads
When we last saw the Raptors, they were walking off the floor in Cleveland in early May, out in seven games in the first round. It was a gut punch and a statement at the same time.
They’d fallen behind 0-2 to a heavily favoured Cavaliers team that went on to reach the Eastern Conference finals. They pushed the series to the brink without Immanuel Quickley, sidelined by a hamstring injury, and with leading scorer Ingram hobbling on an ankle that later needed surgery while struggling to handle Cleveland’s physical defence.
For a franchise that had been drifting on the edge of relevance, that series felt like a crack in the door.
Toronto won 46 games, then went toe-to-toe with a contender while clearly short-handed. The front office saw enough. The response this summer was not subtle: go virtually all-in for Leonard and try to jump from plucky upstart to full-fledged problem in an Eastern Conference that no longer has many soft spots.
Camp opens Sept. 29 in Quebec City. The first pre-season game comes there, too, on Oct. 3 against Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Miami Heat. The Raptors are not easing into anything.
Can they win the title with Leonard back?
That’s the natural question when you trade for and plan to extend a 35-year-old star with a long injury file. Since 2017-18, Leonard has played just 56 per cent of his teams’ games. This is a win-now move in neon lights.
But the East has turned into a gauntlet.
The New York Knicks are defending champions and looked every bit the part in a dominant run. The Philadelphia 76ers somehow walked out of the summer with LeBron James in free agency and Jaylen Brown via trade, plus depth upgrades that vaulted them into the inner circle of contenders. Miami added Antetokounmpo. Boston and Cleveland are still built to win. The 2025 East champion Indiana Pacers expect to have all-NBA point guard Tyrese Haliburton healthy and driving them back into the mix.
Detroit just won 60 games. Atlanta, Orlando, Charlotte and a retooled Washington all have playoff ambitions. Last season, Toronto fattened up on the weaker sides of the conference. That buffet is closing.
Even if Leonard hits peak form, pencilling in a Finals appearance is a stretch. In this landscape, a top-four seed in the East would be a significant achievement and a realistic target.
Who’s the best player now: Kawhi or Scottie?
The instinctive answer is Leonard. He’s coming off one of the best offensive seasons of his career: 27.9 points per game with the Clippers and a seventh all-NBA nod.
But Scottie Barnes has kicked the door down.
Last season, Barnes made first-team all-defence for the first time. Then he detonated in the Cleveland series: 24.1 points, 8.6 assists, 6.1 rebounds, 1.7 blocks and 1.1 steals per game across seven nights. He played with a relentless, all-court ferocity that screamed future all-NBA, maybe even MVP conversations if he can sustain anything close to that over 82 games.
Here’s the real tell: if Leonard repeats his Clippers production and Barnes still has a case as Toronto’s best player, the Raptors won’t just be interesting. They’ll be terrifying.
High points that changed the mood
For the first time in a while, the Raptors’ season highlight reel wasn’t a short one.
They shook off a 1-4, wobbling start with a scorching November: nine straight wins and 13 victories in 14 games that essentially set their trajectory. They reached the NBA Cup quarterfinals. They walked into Oklahoma City in January and beat the defending champions on their floor. In April, they swept a two-game, baseball-style set at home against the Heat to help lock down a top-five seed. They made the playoffs for the first time since 2021-22.
One moment, though, towered over the rest.
Game 6 against Cleveland, facing elimination at home. Mississauga’s own RJ Barrett rose up in overtime, launched a three that smacked the back rim, popped what felt like 12 feet into the air, then dropped straight down through with 1.2 seconds left. Season saved. Series extended. Scotiabank Arena shaking in a way it hadn’t since Leonard’s four-bounce dagger against Philadelphia in 2019.
In a franchise that already had its defining bounce, Barrett carved out one of his own.
Where it went wrong
The lows were there, but they didn’t define the year.
The ugly 1-4 start, featuring some heavy defeats, had the group on edge before November calmed everything down. The more persistent concern was their record against the elite. Toronto went 1-12 against the top four teams in the East and 1-11 against the top six in the West. For a would-be contender, that’s a flashing red light.
Their playoff fight helped mute some of those doubts. The incoming Leonard should help even more in those heavyweight matchups.
The most worrying individual storyline belonged to Jakob Poeltl. The veteran centre started having back issues in training camp and never really found himself. He played only 46 games and rarely at his usual level. In the playoffs, he drifted to the margins of the rotation.
He turns 31 next month, and his three-year, $84 million extension hasn’t even kicked in yet. That’s not a small problem.
New faces, familiar frame
Strip away Leonard and the Raptors will look very familiar.
Darko Rajakovic returns for his fourth season on the bench. The staff is largely unchanged, with one notable addition: Stephen Silas joins as an assistant, replacing James Wade. Silas brings head-coaching experience and a strong reputation as a tactician and communicator.
When the Leonard trade is finalized, Toronto will have 13 guaranteed contracts. They’re brushing up against the $209 million first apron and will be hard-capped after the deal, so carrying more than the league-minimum 14 players would be a surprise.
Rookie Allen Graves turned heads at Summer League in Las Vegas with his all-around game. Veteran Kyle Anderson, who turns 33 this month, arrives to soak up some of the leadership void left by Garrett Temple, now an assistant in Dallas, while still providing useful minutes on the floor.
Who’s gone — and who’ll be missed
Once Leonard lands, Ingram and Dick are out the door.
On paper, that’s a lot of production. Ingram was an all-star and the Raptors’ leading scorer last season. But Leonard is simply better across almost every category, and Ingram’s own injury history always hovered in the background, even as he set a career high in minutes in Toronto.
Dick, 22, never built on his promising second season. By the time the playoffs rolled around, Ja’Kobe Walter, Jamison Battle and even two-way guard AJ Lawson had jumped ahead of him in the rotation. Dick wanted a reset. He’ll get it with a rebuilding Clippers side that can afford to give him rope.
Temple moves from unofficial coach to official one in Dallas. Big-man specialist Mike Batiste returns to Europe to assist his old EuroLeague club in Greece. Lawson heads overseas as well after four years of fighting for an NBA foothold.
Breakout candidates
Can Walter break out twice?
The third-year wing caught fire after the All-Star break, averaging nearly 10 points and racking up 42 steals in 27 games while drilling a blistering 47.6 per cent of his threes off the bench. His defence is still a work in progress, but the instincts are there. If the shooting holds, he doesn’t just raise Toronto’s ceiling. He raises their floor.
Then there’s Collin Murray-Boyles. As a second-year big, he was arguably the Raptors’ second-best player in the playoffs and an impact defender all season despite battling multiple thumb injuries. Give him a healthy hand and another year of experience, and he has a chance to become the kind of switchable, disruptive big every contender covets.
Who feels the heat?
Start with Rajakovic.
His first three seasons came in transition: teardown, build-up, surprise run. Expectations were modest, the stakes relatively low. That’s over. With Leonard in the fold, Barnes entering his sixth season and a projected starting lineup earning $173 million, the margin for error shrinks.
Every rotation choice, every late-game decision, every rest night will be dissected.
Quickley isn’t far behind on the pressure index. He arrived as the centrepiece in the trade that sent OG Anunoby to the Knicks. Barrett has flourished in Toronto. Quickley has been fine, sometimes injured, rarely spectacular. Anunoby already owns a ring. If the Raptors want to make real noise now and in the years ahead, Quickley has to show he can steer a team with serious ambitions, not just spot up and score.
Circle these dates
The schedule offers drama early.
On Nov. 2, Toronto visits the Intuit Dome. Leonard, in Raptors colours, walks into the arena of the franchise that spent a decade’s worth of first-round picks, gave up two-time MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander in the Paul George deal and got one modest Western Conference finals trip out of the whole experiment.
Will he get booed? Count on it. The only wild card is Leonard himself: the Raptors play the Clippers on the second night of a back-to-back. Load management jokes write themselves.
November turns into a proving ground. The Knicks come to Toronto for back-to-back games on Nov. 15 and 17, a measuring stick against the reigning champions. On Nov. 20, the Raptors visit Detroit in a matchup that could decide whether they reach the knockout phase of the NBA Cup.
Later, the star power keeps rolling through Scotiabank Arena. Victor Wembanyama and the Spurs on Dec. 16. LeBron and the Sixers on Jan. 10. Gilgeous-Alexander and the Thunder on March 10.
No more No. 7
One more date matters for different reasons.
On Jan. 10, before the Raptors host the Sixers, Kyle Lowry’s No. 7 will rise to the rafters, joining Vince Carter’s No. 15. The “GROAT” — greatest Raptor of all time — gets the full treatment: a “Lowry Festivus” on Sept. 18-19 with a celebrity golf tournament, a Jurassic Park block party and a fundraising gala.
Lowry leaves the game as Toronto’s all-time leader in assists, steals, three-pointers, wins and playoff wins. His number goes up as the franchise he helped transform takes its biggest swing since the first Kawhi gamble.
The Raptors are betting that history can repeat itself — just not in the same way.
