Expansion in the NBA has been discussed for years, and the league is finally trending toward making that dream a reality.
According to ESPN, the NBA is targeting the 2027-2028 season as the debut year, “although starting in 2026-27 isn’t impossible, it has become more unrealistic.”
It’s also been stated that not one but two teams will enter the league, with the rumoured prospective teams being based in Seattle and Las Vegas.
No, not Vancouver or Montreal like many fans around Canada would have hoped, as the fans on the west coast will just have to settle with the Memphis Grizzlies throwback jerseys.
That means an expansion draft of two teams will occur before the new franchises join the league, similar to how the Toronto Raptors entered the 1995 season alongside the Vancouver Grizzlies.
Who picks first in the expansion draft is decided by a coin flip. In 1995, the Grizzlies won the flip and chose to have the higher selection in the 1995 entry draft, leaving Toronto with the first pick in the expansion draft.
The Raptors would be allowed to protect up to eight players (but can choose to protect fewer) who are either under contract, a restricted free agent, or have a player or team option for the following season.
In the last three dual expansion selection processes (1995, 1989, 1988), no team has had a player selected by each team, so let’s assume Toronto would only lose one player from its roster that isn’t protected.
Expansion drafts typically occur before entry drafts, so Toronto’s five rookies would also be off the table for our purposes. Without further ado, here’s who I think Canada’s team would protect if there was an expansion draft this offseason.
Protected
Guards: Immanuel Quickley, Gradey Dick, Davion Mitchell
Wings/Forwards: Scottie Barnes, RJ Barrett, Bruce Brown Jr., Ochai Agbaji
Bigs: Jakob Poeltl
Most of these names shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Barnes, Quickley, Barrett, and Dick are clearly the core moving forward and take up half of Toronto’s protected list.
There’s some more pause with the next four. Though Poeltl might not necessarily be a part of the Raps’ long-term future, he’s simply too talented of a player to leave unprotected, especially with the remaining talent left on Toronto’s roster. His contract is far from a burden, so there would be no argument behind the idea of getting off of his deal.
Brown, similarly to Poeltl, won’t be a part of Toronto’s plans very far into the future and has been long rumoured to be traded since the moment he touched down in Canada.
So why not leave him unprotected?
While it would clear cap space, the Raptors could still potentially get an asset in return in a trade for Brown. At least, they have to think so — they picked up his deal for the upcoming season. He also isn’t taking up a spot on the protected list from someone else that the team seemingly would be desperate to keep.
Toronto’s point-of-attack defence was one of the main factors in the Raptors’ fifth-worst defensive rating last season, and the 26-year-old Mitchell would be an instant band-aid to stop the bleeding. After getting fewer and fewer minutes over the last three years in Sacramento, Toronto acquired him in a trade with the Kings this offseason and “Off-Night,” as his nickname would suggest, has talent on the defensive side of the ball where the Raptors are weak.
I decided to give the final spot to Agbaji due to his youth and low cap hit. Things didn’t necessarily go to plan in the 24-year-old’s 27 games with the Raptors last season, averaging 6.7 points, 3.3 rebounds, and 1.3 assists while shooting 39.1 percent from the field and a measly 21.7 percent from distance. But there is reason to think he could improve.
Agbaji will make around $4.1 million next season, and if he can shoot the three better while continuing to improve on the defensive end, he could easily get his roughly $6.3 million team option picked up for 2025-2026. He was a positive contributor to the Utah Jazz. He still could be for Toronto.
Unprotected
Guards: Garrett Temple, DJ Carton
Wings/Forwards:
Bigs: Kelly Olynyk, Chris Boucher, Bruno Fernando
With the rookies being ineligible, only five players remain available for selection. Temple and Fernando are easy players to leave off the protected list.
Temple brings value as a locker room leader, but it’s not worth the spot of a young guy, especially with Toronto’s shift of direction. Fernando meanwhile was a late add to camp who doesn’t have a fully guaranteed contract.
That leaves Carton and the Canadians Olynyk and Boucher, the latter being the easiest to leave off the protected list.
The soon-to-be 32-year-old Boucher played the least amount of games (50) and minutes per game (14.1) since his 2019-2020 season, as he was fazed out of the rotation under first-year head coach Darko Rajakovic. There’s value in retaining the Montrealer as a trade asset, but getting his $10.8 million off the books isn’t a bad idea either. It’s likely that if he had trade value to other general managers around the league, Toronto would have pulled the trigger last season.
I also considered protecting Carton as the 24-year-old is coming off a monster year in the G League last season and stood out athletically and on both ends of the floor during Summer League. But he has proven less at the NBA level than Agbaji.
Olynyk was the toughest call.
Toronto gifted the Scarborough, Ont. native a two-year extension with an average annual value (AAV) of around $13.1 million late last regular season, but he is 33 years old, and his play seemed to decline greatly last season and into the Olympics.
While Olynyk can offer help in a weak Raptors front court for this next season, he’s not on the same timeline as the rest of the Raptors’ core, and I’d rather take the flyer on Agbaji’s youth.
There hasn’t been an expansion draft in two decades since the Charlotte Bobcats joined the association in 2004, and the talent has grown exponentially in the league since then.
Based on this exercise, it seems like Toronto won’t be able to protect all of its core players when the expansion draft does come. For our purposes, Toronto having five rookies makes it much easier to keep the vast majority of young, improving players off the table. But there’s no guarantee Toronto will have so many rookies come expansion time. Front office argument over those final two spots will surely be fierce.
It’s year one of the rebuild for Toronto, but when two new teams come knocking on the door for the Raptors’ players, it will be year three or four. Who knows what stage the already established core will be at, what the fresh batch of rookies will turn into, or what talent Canada’s team will acquire before then.
It will be interesting to see who Canada’s team will actually protect when the new teams inevitably join, as it is something Masai Ujiri, Bobby Webster, and other executives around the league are surely already thinking about.
