The Toronto Raptors and Brandon Ingram were hoping for a different outcome, but minor surgery was the prescription to deal with the injury that ended Ingram's season early.
The Raptors announced Friday that Ingram underwent surgery in New York City to remove a heel spur. The injury had impacted him off and on late in the regular season, though Ingram still managed to be named East player of the week at the end of the year and was attacking the rim with authority in the final few games, before getting re-aggravated in the playoffs against Cleveland. Ingram was way off from the field to start the series, possibly related to the injury, but when it got worse, he exited Game 5 after only 11 minutes and didn't play in Toronto's Game 6 win or the Game 7 loss.
The Raptors said Ingram was expected to be fully recovered and ready for training camp in September. While that is better than the alternative, this is not great news, unless Ingram recovers fast enough to get back on the court promptly.
A severe ankle injury cost Ingram most of last season and he spent much of the summer of 2025 rehabbing to make sure he could get back on the court and be effective for his new team. That came to pass, with Ingram setting a new career high in minutes, while leading Toronto with 21.5 points per game and earning his second all-star selection, but he had hoped he would not even have to think about any ailing body parts this time around.
“Most of my summer last year was just rehab, trying to get back on the floor, trying to be healthy enough to play. This summer, I get to go work on things that didn't go so well this season, I get to go get stronger, do a lot of different things. So it's way different than last year,” Ingram had said at his season-ending media availability on Monday. But things changed in the following days and it was determined the surgery was the best course of action.
After missing only five games, Ingram had been frustrated when the heel issue popped up in late-March. “I really didn't have no time to rest it, we were trying to make the playoffs,” Ingram said of the Raptors taking until the last day to clinch a playoff and not a play-in spot. “Coming off last season, playing 18 games, I really prided myself on trying to be out there every single night, but it got to a point where got to a discomfort that I couldn't push off of it or I couldn't do the things on the floor I needed to do to be effective. Going into Game 6 and Game 7. In Game 5 I was trying to do some things to come back. I went to the (locker room) and wanted to come back, and medical staff kind of ruled me out trying to save me for myself a little bit,” he said. “So that was frustrating. I definitely wanted to be out there for my team.”
We will never know if Toronto could have beaten Cleveland with a healthy Ingram and/or Immanuel Quickley. Quickley said Monday he was hoping to avoid surgery to deal with his hamstring injury so that he would be able to have plenty of time to work on improving his game.
Masai Gets His Man
The Dallas Mavericks hired long-time Raptors boss Masai Ujiri earlier this week and that led to speculation that Ujiri would try to poach some of his previous Toronto hires from Bobby Webster. Webster had been asked Wednesday if he expected his staff to be back and he had answered in the affirmative. So seeing Ujiri hire Mike Schmitz as his general manager in Dallas away from Portland has to be regarded as a positive for the Raptors. That is because it likely means Webster's assistant GM Dan Tolzman, who has been here for Webster's entire run, which is now a year longer than Ujiri's second stint in Toronto, is sticking around. Tolzman is extremely highly regarded and has been a key driver of the team's long record of draft success.
Schmitz and his former boss at the scouting site DraftExpress, Jon Givony, go way back with Ujiri. Portland is seen as a penny-pinching organization under Tom Dundon, also the owner of the Carolina Hurricanes, so it was no surprise to see Schmitz move on.
Lottery on the Way
There will not be a lottery miracle for the Raptors like there was this week for their corporate cousins, the Maple Leafs. Toronto will draft 19 and will not be impacted by Sunday's lottery. This is seen as a stacked group of prospects who can help turnaround or bolster many teams. Washington, Indiana and Brooklyn each have 14% odds of landing the first pick and 52.1% odds of selecting in the Top 4. If the Pacers fall to 5 or lower, the pick goes to the Los Angeles Clippers though (via the Ivica Zubac trade in February). New Orleans has 6.8% odds of moving to first and 29.3% of going in the Top 4, but the pick will be going to Atlanta thanks to last year's Derik Queen draft night deal. Dallas, who lucked into rookie of the year Cooper Flagg a year ago, despite having minuscule odds of doing so, has 6.7% odds of giving Ujiri his choice of player at the top of the draft. The nightmare scenario for teams would be the Clippers vaulting from 12 into the Top 4, since the pick is somehow still owed to the league-best Oklahoma City Thunder from the long ago Shai Gilgeous-Alexander heist.
