Jakob Poeltl’s contract is already looming over the Raptors, and the numbers only get heavier from there. Toronto is set to owe him $84,084,000 between the 2027-28 and 2029-30 seasons, a stretch that will keep pulling the team back toward a deal it would probably rather not be living with.
But the picture at center is not just Poeltl by himself. Collin Murray-Boyles has a real chance to change how painful that money feels.
That matters because Poeltl’s deal is the kind of thing that can wreck flexibility in a hurry. He’ll average $28,028,000 per season from 2027-28 through 2029-30, and the final year is only guaranteed for $5 million.
Even that number can climb to just under $27.3 million through incentives. Those bonuses are tied to Poeltl reaching 1,400 minutes played between 2026-27 and 2028-29, with the total rising by $5 million in guaranteed money for the 2029-30 season each time he hits that mark.
He can also add $2,433,333 each time he reaches that threshold and the Raptors make the playoffs during that span.
That is a steep price for a center who is already viewed as a questionable fit. Poeltl has only cleared 1,400 minutes in one of his last three seasons, but even the best-case setup still leaves Toronto staring at two years of a massive cap hit.
Murray-Boyles is the player who can help blunt that blow. If he keeps developing into one of the NBA’s better young bigs, the Raptors can stop thinking about the two contracts separately and start looking at them as a combined interior investment.
His deal is far more manageable in the short term. Murray-Boyles will make $6,649,560 in 2026-27, $6,966,000 in 2027-28, and $8,874,684 in 2028-29. Put together, that means Toronto’s top two bigs will cost $26,149,560 in 2026-27, $34,266,000 in 2027-28, and $38,358,684 in 2028-29.
That doesn’t make the center money painless, and 2029-30 could still get ugly if Poeltl hits his incentives and Murray-Boyles lands a major extension. But the next three seasons are not as suffocating as Poeltl’s salary alone makes them look.
There’s also some useful perspective here. In 2026-27, 11 centers will make more on their own than Poeltl and Murray-Boyles will earn together.
In 2027-28, that number drops to nine. In 2028-29, it falls again to five.
That doesn’t erase the concern, but it does frame the situation in a more workable light.
For Toronto, everything hinges on Murray-Boyles continuing to thrive on his rookie-scale deal. The Raptors need him to grow into a big who can live comfortably in the top half of his position.
Early signs point in the right direction. In 2025-26, Basketball Index had Murray-Boyles in the 95th percentile in overall screener defense, the 92nd percentile in rim protection, and the 83rd percentile in perimeter isolation defense.
He’s not a traditional center at 6'7" and 245 pounds with a 7'0.75" wingspan. But he already spent plenty of time playing positionless defense last season in lineups where Sandro Mamukelashvili, another nontraditional center, was beside him. With Scottie Barnes and Kawhi Leonard helping anchor the defense too, Murray-Boyles showing he can handle a Draymond Green type of role could go a long way toward covering for Poeltl’s shortcomings.
And even if Murray-Boyles ends up more as a 4, the value is still there. Toronto would still need to upgrade at center, but getting 30 minutes a night from Murray-Boyles would create a more flexible defense and give the Raptors a big who can deliver in many of the areas Poeltl is supposed to provide.
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Raptors Just Made Their Center Problem Even Harder To Ignore
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Nate Bittle, Jamarion Sharp and Nimari Burnett are among the names that could be in the mix for those openings, while former Raptors draft pick Christian Koloko is also being mentioned as a possibility. No signings have been reported yet, so the next move will say plenty about how the Raptors want to address a position that is suddenly impossible to ignore. [Read more 🡒]