Coming out of the All-Star break, Toronto sits in fifth place in the Eastern Conference. The Raptors are on pace to crush preseason expectations, doing so as the seventh-youngest team in the league when weighted by minutes played.
That puts Raptors fans in an interesting position.
Few expected this level of success entering the season, but at the same time, few are penciling this young core in as a 2026 NBA title contender. That reality raises an important question: what actually constitutes a successful season for Toronto?
It is not a championship-or-bust season
After being eliminated in the 2023 playoffs, Giannis Antetokounmpo was famously asked whether he considered the season a failure. His response sparked a league-wide debate:
"It’s steps to success. I don’t want to make it personal. There’s always steps to it. There’s no failure in sports."Giannis Antetokounmpo
That perspective applies directly to this Raptors team. Not every season needs to end with a championship to be considered successful, especially for a young group still finding its footing. Toronto has already exceeded expectations and shown meaningful development throughout the year. In many ways, the season has already been a success.
Still, expectations are fluid. Even though this team is on track to surpass preseason projections, a late-season stumble that results in a missed playoff berth would leave many Raptors fans disappointed.
Playoff experience is now the goal
Based on how Toronto has played through the first half of the season, the Raptors have officially graduated into a team with legitimate playoff expectations. This core should look to the mid-2010s Raptors as a developmental precedent.
That group reached the playoffs for the first time in 2014, blowing past preseason expectations. They ultimately fell in a hard-fought first-round series to the lower-seeded Brooklyn Nets, but the experience proved foundational. Toronto followed that up with another strong regular season and another first-round exit in 2015 before finally breaking through in 2016, reaching the franchise’s first Eastern Conference Finals.
That year-by-year progression is often how development works in the NBA.
The 2026 Toronto Raptors have shown over the first half of the season that they are ready to make the jump from a promising young core to a legitimate playoff team. As a result, the standard has changed. Anything short of a playoff berth would now feel like a disappointment.
The playoff experience needs to mean something
Reaching the playoffs alone is not the end goal. For this young core, the postseason needs to provide credible takeaways that carry into future seasons. In other words, if Toronto does not win a championship this year, how they lose will matter.
If the Raptors enter the playoffs as a “just-happy-to-be-here” team, the experience risks becoming hollow. Meaningful growth comes from competing, responding to adjustments, and proving they can hold their own against the Eastern Conference’s best. The 2014 Raptors again offer a useful example. That team lost in the first round but went toe-to-toe with a more experienced Nets group, pushing the series to a tight Game 7.
That core learned from the experience and built on it in the seasons that followed. If the 2026 Raptors can replicate that type of competitive playoff showing, this season should be viewed as a resounding success.