Raptors fans looking for a big regular-season jump may need to pump the brakes a little, even if Kawhi Leonard ends up in the mix.
That’s the tension hanging over Toronto right now: the roster could get a major boost, but the Eastern Conference is loaded enough that not every good team is built the same. CBS Sports’ Sam Quinn laid out that split on The Third Apron Podcast on July 25, and he put Toronto in the group that may be better suited for the postseason than for piling up wins from October through April.
“The Knicks being number one, I would then split the East into kind of two buckets where you have Philly, Toronto, and Indiana that I look at as teams that are probably not going to really stack regular-season wins because there are injury concerns, because there are changes they’re going to have to adjust to,” Quinn said.
He drew a sharp line between that group and the teams he sees as regular-season forces. “And I look at the regular-season wins teams, like Detroit won 60 games last year.
They’re going to win a ton of regular-season games…The Celtics are gonna win a lot of games…Orlando is a great regular-season team. Atlanta, I think, has a chance to be a really good regular-season team.
But that group doesn’t have that much playoff equity to me. So, you have to divide the East into these two buckets where we might go into the first round and look at three of the four series and say, ‘yeah, the lower seed seems like a bigger threat to me to actually make the finals.’”
If Leonard does land with the Raptors, the regular season becomes a careful balancing act. He’s 35, and the source material makes clear that he has rarely gone through seasons without injuries. Toronto would have to manage his workload, because the point of bringing him in is not to chase regular-season noise - it’s to have him available when the games matter most.
That creates a tricky equation for a young team. The Raptors would need enough time on the floor together to build real playoff trust, but not so much that Leonard gets worn down before the postseason arrives.
Resting him would make sense, but it could also cost them in the standings. And while a top seed is valuable, the source notes how important homecourt advantage can be in the playoffs.
There’s at least one reminder that playing at home matters. The home team won every game in the Raptors’ series against the Cavaliers. At the same time, the source also points out that a healthy Toronto group with Leonard would have a much better chance to win on the road than last season’s young team, which went seven games without Immanuel Quickley for all seven and also had Brandon Ingram not fully healthy.
So yes, stacking wins would be nice. But if Toronto doesn’t come out blazing in the regular season, that alone shouldn’t set off alarms.
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