The Raptors and newly acquired forward Brandon Ingram have reached an agreement on a three-year contract extension, according to Shams Charania and Bobby Marks of ESPN (Twitter link), who hear from Ingram’s agents at Klutch Sports that the deal will be worth $120MM and will feature a player option for the 2027/28 season.
Ingram was traded from the Pelicans to the Raptors last week in a deal that sent Bruce Brown, Kelly Olynyk, and two draft picks (one first-rounder and one second-rounder) to New Orleans.
Ingram had spent the previous five-and-a-half seasons with the Pelicans after having been a centerpiece of the team’s return in 2019’s Anthony Davis blockbuster with the Lakers. From 2019-25, Ingram averaged 23.0 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 4.3 assists per game in 305 total outings for New Orleans, with a .472/.372/.847 shooting line and a 2020 All-Star berth.
The Pelicans and Ingram were unable to come to terms last offseason – or during the first half of this season – on a new contract that would extend the 27-year-old’s $36MM expiring deal, which led to the decision to trade him.
The Raptors were clearly more comfortable with the idea of investing in Ingram — general manager Bobby Webster said after last week’s trade that the front office wouldn’t have made the trade if there wasn’t “a comfort level with (the contract) he was looking for.”
Recently traded players face certain limitations on the extensions they’re permitted to sign, but Ingram’s new contract will fall within those limits (which include a 20% first-year raise, subsequent annual raises of 5%, and four total years, including the current season).
The deal will also come in well below Ingram’s maximum. Based on current cap projections, he would’ve been eligible to receive up to about $150MM over the next three years (or $269.1MM over five) if he had waited until free agency to sign a new contract with the Raptors. His maximum three-year extension right now would’ve been worth $136.1MM.
The exact impact of Ingram’s extension on Toronto’s cap situation for 2025/26 and beyond won’t be known until we see the official numbers, but it figures to push the team up over $175MM in guaranteed money for 10 players for next season. That will be well over the projected cap ($154.6MM), but will put the team in position to stay below the projected tax line ($187.9MM).
Ingram, who is still recovering from an ankle injury and whose Raptors debut is likely still a little ways off, is now part of a core in Toronto that also includes Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley, Gradey Dick, and RJ Barrett.
I don’t understand the Raptors roster at all, isn’t Ingram just a little better RJ? IQ RJ BI Scottie Poeltl has no spacing and little defense?
We will see. I wouldn’t be surprised if they move off RJ or IQ this off-season, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they rolled out this lineup. They have a ton of high end depth, but obviously still need a superstar to compete.
Its like how they think the NBA is giing. Like the fake positionless basketball. No rebounding no banging no rim protection. Cause we ALL kniw Basketball doesn’t need that.,….
I don’t understand it either for a different reason. Barnes was drafted a SF. Like a point forward. He would keep excelling if he was playing is natural position SF. 6’7 isn’t big enough for a PF’s so sorry. Rodman and Green are the exceptions. Ingram is a SF too but whatever. I don’t want to hear it, 6’7 Barnes will not live up to the potential if he keeps playing PF…
The age range from IQ, Barrett, and Barnes is 23-25. I would get a PF and C the age for the starters on the bench. Other teams might be the opposite. I question fit here. Jacob could have traded too for a younger C. (Wiseman was perfect to see next year because his age matches the timeline but whatever
Probably a summer trade brewing with Jazz.
Utah gets RJ Barrett ($27.7M) next year, Gradey Dick ($4.9M) and 2027 top 10 protected pick from Raptors
Toronto gets: Walker Kessler ($4.8M), Colin Sexton ($19.1M) and KJ Martin $8M.
Toronto sends out $32.6M, Utah sends out $31.9M. Toronto gets Sexton and Martin on expiring deals. Utah gets 3 more years with Gradey Dick and 2 years with RJ and a valuable 1st they can attach or hold onto for 2027.
Horrible deal for the raps. Never happen. Why would they give up those players plus a 1st for that return?? Joke.
Bc they need a center who is young and still on a rookie salary? lol and you get two expiring salaries lmao
They have Yak
And they can draft one this year if they want. And what are they gonna do with two expiring deals? Trade them for second rounders? Buddy this is one of the worst trades I’ve seen on here.
Kessler is a third year player so he won’t be on a rookie contract much longer. They also still have Poeltl who, while not young, is solid and on a fair contract.
And why do they need the expiring contracts? You’re basically saying RJ’s contract is an albratross they need to get rid of. I don’t get any of the logic here, particularly for a team which still has a ton to prove.
This has to be bait, it’s not possible that anyone could realistically think this is a reasonable trade
I like the teams. I don’t like the deal.
I feel like a trade involving Rj Barrett going to Utah and Collins and Kessler heading back to Raptors is a lot easier to accomplish.
Other pieces would be involved like pics and players to get it to work but moving Barrett and starting dick while adding Collins and Kessler to the bench improve the raptors depth up front
Pg quickley
Sg dick
Sf Ingram
Pf Barnes
C Poetl
Bench of Kessler Collins Agbaji for c pf sf could add some guard depth via draft free agency.
I think putting Rj next to Lauri makes a lot of sense too from Jazz perspective to add some more offense
Sexton pg
George sg
Barrett sf
Lauri pf
C filipkowski
Bench of clarkson collier Hendricks Williams Juzang sensabaugh could add some c depth via draft or free agency or trade from their stock pile of sg/sf sf/pf
Ingram only plays offense. That is a lot of money for a player that only can shoot. They need defense.
I thought he was known as a good defender
Good defender? Who thought that?
For those who care about this kind of thing, with tax treaties between Canada and US, this means that Ingram takes home considerably less than if he’d signed with an American team…
40M with the Canadian tax hit is equivalent to about ~$33M if he’d signed with a team based in a state with state taxes like Texas or Florida, or ~$36M in a state with higher taxes like California or New York.
Aren’t all Raptors contracts based on US dollars? I recall an old article about player contracts for Vancouver and Toronto that referenced all contracts to be paid in US dollars.
Yes, Ingram is getting paid $40M/yr in US dollars.
It’s about taxes. In addition to what Raptor players must pay the US government, the Canadian/Ontario government also taxes their income.
The short form is players get taxed this much more over the baseline tax-free states like TX or FL:
– 10% extra in CA or NY
– 18% extra in Canada
So a player would value a $40M/yr contract like this:
– $40M/yr if paid by a TX or FL based team
– $36M/yr if paid by a CA or NY based team
– $33M/yr if paid by the Raptors
It’s a huge disadvantage for the Raptors (as Kahwi stated), just as being in Miami is a huge advantage for the Heat.
It’s also why the Ingram, Quickley, and Barnes contracts look too big. Nobody will sign a big deal with the Raptors without consideration for the added income tax.
I think the players can choose the currency they receive their salary in
Canadian and American currencies can be exchanged at zero cost. That’s not the consideration.
The only important consideration is the home country of the source of the income (i.e., Canada vs the US). That determines which and how many government entities tax that income in real dollars.
Tax treaties between Canada and the US address entertainers and pro athletes. Raptors players that are US residents get taxed by both American and Canadian governments according to those tax treaties between. The bottom line is that Americans playing for the Raptors pay ~10% in total income taxes than Americans.
American players only pay tax in Canada on the days that they actually “work“ in Canada. The rest of the time they pay taxes in their home state. While Canada does have relatively high income taxes, it is pretty much equal to New York State, Massachusetts, and many many other states. There is also roughly 30% difference in value between the Canadian and American dollars. So the American dollar goes 30% farther in Canada. And you also don’t have to worry about every Tom Dick and Harry packing a gun, or having to deal with the orange buffoon Full-time.
Mtog – having lived in both Toronto and California myself, what you describe applies to normal workers. We’re talking here about how NBA players that formally reside in the United States and play for the Raptors get paid and taxed.
– They get paid in US dollars (so they don’t worry about the exchange rate with the CDN dollar).
– Their taxes, even the Canadian taxes, are on the basis of the total value of that contract, which is guaranteed, and not based on days of work.
– Tax treaties between the 2 countries determine the rates paid for this class of worker/resident. The effective tax rate for a $40M contract is roughly 18% higher for a Raptors player than one based in a US state with no state income tax (like FL or TX)
Rent or real estate are paid in cdn
Rww59 ,the problem is that American players will never formally reside in Canada because they’d lose millions of dollars more in taxes to the Canadian government.
Living in Canada does have some advantages over the US, but wealth generation and preservation are not among them.
@mtog Lmao what a rose tinted view of Toronto
Now trade Quickley!
I feel like sometimes the magnitude of these numbers gets lost in how desensitized we are to it over time, but like…
…dude is averaging $40 million a YEAR.
I have no point. Just a stupid amount of money.
Wait til you hear about how much money elon musk has made in the last 4 years!
That will pale in comparison to what he makes in the next 4 years, now that he is in charge of regulating his own companies.
3 yrs 120 mill ….. not worth it to me.
Those stats are decent with NO. But its all offense. And when he wants to play offense. A one way player. That has not learned how to win yet.
Don’t get paying top money. To two players who play the same position.
Raptors should be tanking this yr. This trade says they won’t. This team needs a rim protector and rebounder. First rd is deep next yr. As far as time line for players. Ingram fits their group of young talent. Im curious to see how they make it work.
They are definitely still tanking. Ingram might only play a handful of games.
Bad look trading for Ingram then tanking. Right now they are 7gms out of play-in. With a record of 16-37. Closer to play in than top 5 pick. Imo a top 10 pick this yr is very significant. Ive seen the Duke center dropping. He would be perfect for Raptors. Probably a top 10 pick.
You add Ingram you play to win. Cause you want to build this young group right. Seems like a tough place to me. But I can tell you a top 10 pick is great. Even a lottery pick is a nice pick.
Khaman Maluach —
link to nbadraftroom.com
Al, I agree that it doesn’t make any sense to pay all these guys. It seems like one of them has to be traded.
BI is hurt anyway. Injuries and illness have riddled the core players. The goal is still a top 2 lottery pick. You sound worried knickerbocker, me as a raptor fan am not.
I only worry about Knicks. You don’t trade for Ingram to get a top two pick. Even if he never plays. You are not getting top two pick. Have you seen the standings.
I liked the Ingram acquisition. But I would have waited on the extension until he played with the team (or didn’t play) the last 30 games. Ingram is a max talent, but its matched by max fragility. Constant minor/mysterious injuries and slow rehabs are a hard risk to cover, but paying him a discount from max wouldn’t be my preferred way of dealing with it. If the FO needed to do something now, I’d sooner have given him full max for 2 years, with a team option in the third year that he can make guaranteed by actually playing a normal amount of games the first two seasons.
He makes TOR an interesting team, still full of ill-fitting pieces, but that’s apparently the way Ujiri likes it.
Funny cause I actually projected his ext at exactly 4/120 here last week
Oddly a 3/120 might work better for Tor for reasons your post eludes too despite being a worse value theoretically on AAV
They are getting expensive tho so lets just hope they bust the wallets out to keep the line moving and make all these moves more palatable
Counterintuitive, for sure, that a team could be be better off paying a significantly higher AAV, and almost the same totals, in exchange for fewer years on the deal (although I did hedge some by making it a team option for the last year).
But looking at the CBA payroll rules, one has to conclude that (practically) NBA teams now do have a salary cap, even if its not a single number every year for every team. When team building, the difference between 40 mm and 50 mm on the books matters, but not nearly as much as that between either of those amounts and Zero. Of course, if you’re tanking, no biggie. I sort of assumed that TOR would be tanking for 2 years. Maybe this means it’s 3. Or maybe they just believe in Ingram that much.
Feels very large market baseball-E… Higher AAV lob off some years on the backend. Strange as there’s zero crossover MLB to NBA, in fact contradictory mechanisms but if anybody would (attempt to) connect those dots it be Masai
I assume they are full on going for it for better or worse the next 2 years at least. At that point, per your post, a 1/40 plays a lot better than a 2/60 to parcel .
Im cool with the line of thinking just wish they invested their money into better/safer players than Quickley and Ingram
The first casualty of a shallow market is risk aversion.
Baseball, 5 years ago, I thought had pretty much mastered the short (escape strategy) contracts. Analytics helped them. But IDK any longer. 10+ year deals for guys who are 30-ish have come out of the woodwork the past 5 years. But they don’t have the same type of cap.
With this new CBA, I expected it would be surprising for people to ever really hit FA at a certain level, and it would make trades of big time players more of a thing, and I’m now fully convinced that’s how thing will be moving forward. I don’t know this won’t be a guy that gets moved down the line. It is interesting he only got a relatively shorter extension though; obviously he still has the player option, but I’m curious to see how much more willing players will be to sacrifice guaranteed years for more control over potentially being a FA (sooner)
Masai Ujiri is cooking something, I dont think he has given up on pursuing Giannis and I think giving Ingram this contract is one step towards that
Yeah the Bucks are definitely licking their lips to get their hands on Ingram…
I agree. Something interesting in the works in Toronto. Masai has landed Kahwi already, so why not Giannis. He thinks big. Milwaukee knows its window has closed.
But Giannis for whom? Scottie Barnes is supposedly untouchable, but he seems like the only play that has Toronto to compete with packages that teams with infinite draft capital (like Utah) or star young talent (like Houston, Orlando) could offer.
Giannis makes ~$60M/yr, Barnes at $45M/yr. Throw in some more young Toronto talent and picks. Deal done.
Ingram, who can’t be moved at $40M/yr, provides some scoring and spacing for Giannis. Quickley is the primary ball handler.
How stupid
Brandon Ingram will make in one year what Charles Barkley made in his entire career.
Raptors get this guy next yr. Look Out !!!!!
link to nbadraftroom.com
Seen him dropping. Still raw and young. Definitely going top 10. Pels take him if they fall out of top 3.
OMG, another legit 7’2″ center.
Soon, we’ll be calling 6’11” centers “undersized”.
Al, don’t you like Yves Missi, the Pels rookie C?