Title: Raptors Takeaways: Shaky loss to Wizards highlights sobering stretch
Date: December 26, 2025
Original Source: Sportsnet
Synopsis: In my latest at Sportsnet, I wrote about a very bad Raptors loss to the Wizards that caps a month where they were quietly one of the worst team’s in the league.
he Toronto Raptors are at risk of ending 2025 the same way they started it.
Friday’s 138-117 loss to the Washington Wizards looked all too similar to the games that defined January through April, where the Raptors battled teams at the bottom of the standings without a few key players each night. While the answer in 2024-25 was that a shorthanded Raptors team wasn’t bad enough to out-race truly bad teams to the bottom, the answer of late is that the 2025-26 Raptors are not good enough to assume victory against those same dregs, especially when down a few bodies.
The key difference, of course, is that the Raptors want to be winning this year. RJ Barrett and Jakob Poeltl are legitimately injured, and the hope entering the year was that there was enough depth – new additions, young players who got expanded developmental opportunity last season, a healthy Brandon Ingram – to withstand the lighter parts of the schedule at less than 100 per cent. A projection of, say, 44 wins for the team (hello) included a belief they’d be deep, tough, and effortful enough to win games like Friday’s.
The Raptors aren’t there yet.
Blake Murphy Sports Writing 