Fit on the basketball court isn’t like math, not like adding two skill sets and ending up with a sum. Or if fit is governed by math, it’s the hard kind, the kind that jumps around, doesn’t yield the same answer twice in a row. Quadratic fractals, if those exist. The Mandelbrot set.
The Toronto Raptors have a history of learning that lesson. I was never a believer that Toronto’s (old, though perhaps new again) plan of stacking wings together didn’t make sense. In fact, I thought Pascal Siakam, Scottie Barnes, and OG Anunoby were a solid fit together. The team never found a rim-pressuring guard to play alongside the trio, or a floor-spacing big. But that argument is dead and buried.
In 4557 career minutes together, Barnes and Siakam enjoyed a net rating of plus-1.67. In 4141 career minutes without Siakam, Barnes has had a net rating of negative-1.72. Those are pretty close — the argument here is not that the Raptors should have kept Siakam or anything like that. Simply that Barnes was not worse alongside another high-level wing than he has been without him.
Brandon Ingram is certainly a high-level wing. The 2019-20 All Star (he also won Most Improved Player that year, the season after Siakam) has consistently averaged 20-5-5 ever since breaking out. He is a talent upgrade on any running mate Barnes has had since Siakam. Perhaps the move isn’t entirely a home run from the team-building perspective, but from a pure basketball view, Ingram will help the product quite a bit. He will instantly step onto the team as one of its best offensive players, if not the best in a number of categories.
Perhaps most importantly, Ingram is a very high-level isolation scorer. By a wide margin the best on the team. He was one of 33 players last year to finish more than 2.0 possessions via isolation and to average at least 0.9 points per possession on such sets. He was at 2.5 possessions used and 0.96 points per possession, right in line with players like Donovan Mitchell, Jaylen Brown, and Damian Lillard. The Raptors have desperately needed an isolation scorer. (Siakam, as long as we’re comparing, has also comfortably cleared those thresholds over the last several seasons.) Ingram may well be Toronto’s closer. It also helps that Toronto has a point guard in Immanuel Quickley who is deadly as an off-ball shooter (providing more space for Ingram’s isolations) and who can comfortably slide to roles that enjoy less primacy, giving his wings more space to initiate.
Ingram is a smooth operator. He has a clean left-right handle with the ability to quickly progress north-south when he sees lanes open. He has great feel for the momentum of his opponents. He’s jittery. He has good pacing. And, of course, a buttery jumper. (This reel could have been like 15 minutes long, had I so chosen. I stopped after a couple good ones.)
That ability to create his own shot and remain relatively efficient is largely why Ingram has driven solid offence in a way nobody in Toronto has managed. Over the last four seasons, Ingram in New Orleans without his best offensive teammate, Zion Williamson, had an offensive rating of 114.95. Barnes’ offensive rating without Siakam over the same time period was 112.63. There’s a whole lot more that goes into those numbers, of course, including all of their other teammates. But Ingram represents a baseline that Toronto’s offence in some ways lacks.
If Ingram represents Toronto’s floor raiser and Barnes the ceiling lifter, that is a potent combination. It’s a simplification, of course. Both do both jobs, at least in part. But to a large extent, Ingram will be the miner, pulling coal from the ground, and Barnes the alchemist, transmuting base metals into gold.
Still, Ingram isn’t just a scorer in isolation, of course. He’s much more. Perhaps most importantly for the purposes of the Raptors, he’s also an excellent shooter. An elite pull-up 2-point scorer (hence the isolation strengths) and a very good catch-and-shoot 3-point shooter. In 18 games this season he shot 40.9 percent on catch-and-shoot triples, compared to just 30.9 percent on pull-up triples. It’s not just a hot streak over a small sample. Both marks are right in line with his career averages on such shots.
So Ingram can help space the floor, likely in a way that Siakam was never able to do as a Raptor alongside Barnes. When Barnes is creating in the post, driving the ball as a secondary attacker — which has improved this season — Ingram will be one of Toronto’s best options forming up around those drives and cannoning those triples into the net when his defender leaves him. He’s also taken the vast majority of his triples over his career above the break, rather than from the corners, which is huge for Toronto. Corner shooting is more efficient, but easier to take away for defences. Quality above-the-break shooting pressures defences in more threatening ways, moves defenders further distances, and offers teammates more spacing.
Ingram is hitting 38.5 percent on 5.8 above-the-break triples per game so far on the year (which is in line with his career averages, even though he’s taking slightly more per game). When you compare that to the Raptors, he would lead the team in attempts per game and rank behind only Jamison Battle in accuracy. So, yeah. A big add as a shooter. He’ll offer more space to Barnes’ drives, from better angles, pulling stunters and diggers (who often do deter Barnes from driving) higher and higher on the floor. Don’t be surprised to see Barnes tilt his sliders more towards driving and less towards pull-up shooting with Ingram on the floor beside him.
Furthermore, Ingram is not just a solid spot-up shooter, but he’ll also step in as Toronto’s best driver. His 12.3 drives per game and 52.9 percent accuracy when shooting during a drive (again, both right in line with his numbers from the last many years) are both excellent. In fact, he’d rank second in drives per game (behind only Barrett) and fifth in accuracy (behind only players who drive 1-2 times per game. He’s stronger than his slim frame might suggest, and he takes such enormous strides that if defenders try to shift up to take away the pull-up jumper, he can tango straight past them with one step.
He’s actually eighth in leaguewide efficiency on drives among those with at least 12 per game. That’s staggering stuff. He consistently draws a boatload of fouls. He doesn’t reach the rim a whole lot, but he can get there, and he’s elite at finishing when he does — shooting above 70 percent both this season and last. He has a great sense of where the rim is to be found, even if he’s turning and twisting. And his arms are so long that he can loft finger rolls from extraordinary distances.
It’s also significant that Barnes and Ingram share the court alongside Jakob Poeltl. Barnes and Ingram both prefer to operate in the mid-range. There can be some diminishing returns to volume scoring chances in that area, so it is important that Poeltl offer something of a buffer to their time together. He sets monster screens, of course, which will free Ingram especially for his mid-range dancery. But his choices out of delay action, his toggling the chain through the 24-second shot clock, will do plenty to tilt Toronto’s shot profile to the analytically friendlier areas of the rim and the 3-point line, even if Ingram and Barnes themselves don’t take too many shots from those areas. The hope has to be that with Poeltl on the floor with them, Barnes and Ingram can fit into a modern offence, even if they aren’t the ones providing the modern shot selection.
Ingram has never played alongside a post hub passer with the decision-making chops like Poeltl, nor has he played in an offence designed the way Darko Rajakovic has built his. It’s true that Ingram has never been a high-volume cutter (though his efficiency finishing cuts has been sky-high). But it’s not unreasonable to expect that to bump up alongside Poeltl. He will theoretically cut more because that’s what everyone does in Toronto. RJ Barrett has shattered his own cutting records since becoming a Raptor. Barnes always finds cutters for automatic points. Maybe Ingram doesn’t become Steph Curry all of a sudden (as a cutter, I mean), but it’s likely he cuts more than ever. Or not. Outside of scripted sets, he really did not cut opportunistically. Getting anything there will be a nice plus. If it is going to happen, it would be in Toronto.
But the scripted cuts: He’ll offer some bazooka punch to Toronto’s handoffs and pindowns. Currently only Gradey Dick is particularly threatening coming off pindowns, which has rocketed him to Toronto’s second-best offensive on/offs, despite riding an extended cold streak that has plunged his efficiency to the basement. And Ingram can take Dick’s pindown abilities and supercharge them. Turn those muskets into breechloaders, at least.
Such events allow Barnes more space to just kind of hang out. To not bear the world on his shoulders. He’ll have more space on his catches above the break, which means he’ll be able to find more paydirt as a second-side driver. He won’t have to do all the heavy lifting. Ingram is also a very advanced passer, especially from the same mid-range area where he does so much damage, so his ability to create for teammates should both lessen Barnes’ load as a creator and ramp up Barnes’ ability to score spoon-fed (read: efficient) buckets as a cutter and off-ball mover.
The actual two-man game between Barnes and Ingram doesn’t necessarily project to have a whole lot of punch. It’s likely that the best outcomes will — as with Siakam and Barnes years ago — end up in a switch, which allows either Barnes or Ingram to attack the lesser defender who just switched onto him. Ingram has improved as a pick-and-roll handler, as has Barnes. But neither is a particularly accomplished screener (though Barnes has created better contact in recent weeks). That’s not ideal, but it’s also not a death knell. Players don’t need to run actions together to succeed together. Especially from the 3-4 spots.
Defensively, Ingram will probably step onto the team as its best non-Barnes wing defender. (That says more about the team than it does Ingram himself.) He’s enormous, and size is incredibly important. He’s probably been something of a defensive neutral for most of his career (that’s obviously a rough estimate and hard to judge), and he’s fit into some good defences in his time in New Orleans. He won’t drive strong defence, but neither will he cripple it. If Barnes continues his earth-shattering defensive play, Ingram can fit in and help catalyze success. The Raptors still need to replace Davion Mitchell in the defensive scheme, and the team still needs another lockdown isolation defender on the wing. But Ingram can help the defence if its already clicking. Fortunately, it has been in recent weeks.
There are plenty of assumptions in projecting a fit between two players who haven’t played together. First and foremost: that they even will. Ingram has been out since early December with an ankle sprain, and he doesn’t have a timeline to return. Does Toronto even want him to return this season? It’s hard to know, as chasing a high draft pick and losing games in 2025 are likely key priorities. If Masai Ujiri and company had their way, it’s possible Ingram plays few games this season as the Raptors keep up their losing ways, and he returns healthy next season, on a new contract, with a shiny new lottery pick also ready to suit up for the team.
But whether Ingram and Barnes play together this year or next, there are plenty of reasons to expect the fit to be successful. Not seamless, but certainly beneficial in all sorts of ways. Many of the reasons Ingram should help Toronto is because the team lacks so much of what modern offences take for granted. For example, in New Orleans he was a hesitant shooter. In Toronto he might be a volume shooter. The difference might only be context.
But context should heavily favour Ingram in Toronto. As it has with RJ Barrett before him, and Gary Trent jr before him. Ingram’s shooting and driving and passing and finishing will all be huge benefits to Toronto. And, specifically, to Barnes. Similarly, Barnes’ passing should help Ingram grow his game in positive ways. Toronto’s offensive system, and Poeltl’s role within it, should help connect the two players in further positive ways. The first step is just getting Ingram on the court for Toronto. But even if that doesn’t happen for some time, rest assured: that’s all part of the plan.
