The $104 million anchor weighing down Raptors vs. Cavs

On Monday evening, the Toronto Raptors fell behind 0-2 in their first round playoff series vs the Cleveland Cavaliers with an uninspiring 115-105 loss on the road. This game mostly followed a familiar script to Game 1, with Toronto consistently finding itself unable to generate good looks on offense, with Cleveland’s talent gap appearing to be too much for the underdog Raptors to overcome.

In this game, big man Jakob Poeltl played just nine minutes, scoring two points to go along with four rebounds, which may make sense in a vacuum given his struggles throughout this series, but spells disaster for the long haul in Toronto considering the 4-year, $104 million contract extension he signed with the team this past summer.

Poeltl is one of many players on this team whom the Raptors paid well above market value for, including injured guard Immanuel Quickley, and this poor roster management threatens to ruin this era of Toronto basketball before it even has a chance to take off, unless the front office can miraculously find a way to get off these contracts via a trade.

Elsewhere on Tuesday, Brandon Ingram put together arguably his worst performance in a Raptors uniform, scoring seven points on a disastrous 3-15 from the field, conjuring up memories of his last playoff series against the Oklahoma City Thunder in 2024 when he was a member of the New Orleans Pelicans.

The good news for the Raptors is that the series will now shift to Toronto, where their fans have been itching for some playoff basketball for the last few years. Game 3 is about as close to a must-win as one can have without literally facing elimination, and the Raptors will hope to give the fans in attendance something to cheer about.

Tipoff for that matchup is set for Thursday evening at 8:00 pm ET.

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