Official Brandon Ingram Thread

[Ari_Emanuel]

Where does BI rank among forwards in the east? I think he might be 3rd.

1) Giannis
2) Tatum
3) BI

Giannis and Tatum are clearly #1 and #2 then one could make a case for any of Ingram, Siakam, Paolo or Franz as #3.

Don't forget Mikal and OG.

There are many good forwards in the East, which is why we need a Brandon Ingram in the first the first place. We needed a talent injection just for the chance to be a fringe playoff team.

[sidsid]

Everyone worried about Scottie taking 8 threes a game, but we should be worried if BI doesn't.

It should be half his shot diet. Off movement shooting/motion offense. Drive if forced off the line, leads more to playmaking than long 2s. That's the recipe.

[MEDIC]

Would be a really cool storyline if BI made the allstar game next season.

[mtcan]

Did Darko say anything about Ingram not suiting up this year?

Read on Twitter

I like this approach.

Make sure he's a 110% going into next season and has a more durable and better conditioned ankle.

Pels medical staff is garbage.

Ya...they should take time between now and start of next season to really rework his body. Strengthen the legs and improve stability around the ankles... hopefully with improved conditioning and strength he can handle the rigors of the NBA season better.

[Scase]

This reached 25 pages already, fans are excited I'd say...

Wish I could fast forward the rest of this season and see how the team plays 2025-2026.

Second year in a row I've heard this.

[CPT]

Where does BI rank among forwards in the east? I think he might be 3rd.

1) Giannis
2) Tatum
3) BI

Depends who counts as a forward (Brown is a guard? Towns is a C?), but he’s probably closer to 13th than 3rd.

I actually think it’s closer to 30th

[Raps Militia]

Where does BI rank among forwards in the east? I think he might be 3rd.

1) Giannis
2) Tatum
3) BI

Depends who counts as a forward (Brown is a guard? Towns is a C?), but he’s probably closer to 13th than 3rd.

I actually think it’s closer to 30th

Many times I think that most Raptors fans don't have the slightest idea of ​​what this player's value is. Ingram is without a doubt one of the most talented guys (offensively) in the entire league. And I'm not saying this because we took him, I've always thought so and the facts speak for him.

And then I have to read that there are people who get excited about Davion Mitchell, let's not joke, please.

[ArthurVandelay]

I’m surprised people opposed to the trade aren’t at least hedging their bets. None of us know what is going to happen and it seems likely he doesn’t even play this season.

The GROAT arrived in Toronto at 26 and didn’t make an AS game until 28 but then proceeded to make 6 consecutive.

BI arrives more individually accomplished, but obviously a huge red flag on the injuries. Given his talent and the poop show he had in NO (Zion & cheap ownership), I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mid-late career surge…obviously it is going to depend on his health and team success.

[pingpongrac]

Where does BI rank among forwards in the east? I think he might be 3rd.

1) Giannis
2) Tatum
3) BI

Depends who counts as a forward (Brown is a guard? Towns is a C?), but he’s probably closer to 13th than 3rd.

I actually think it’s closer to 30th

If your valuation of Ingram is that he’s not a top 20 forward in the East, it’s no wonder you’re so upset with the trade.

Giannis and Tatum are the only forwards clearly better than Ingram. Even if you expand it to include a G/F like Brown or PF/Cs like Towns and Bam, he’s firmly in the top 10. This is a guy that put up 25/6/6 per36 on 58 TS% for his career in New Orleans. He has been a borderline all-star for the past 6 seasons, but injuries and playing in the West have taken a few all-star selections away from him.

[bluerap23]

I’m surprised people opposed to the trade aren’t at least hedging their bets. None of us know what is going to happen and it seems likely he doesn’t even play this season.

The GROAT arrived in Toronto at 26 and didn’t make an AS game until 28 but then proceeded to make 6 consecutive.

BI arrives more individually accomplished, but obviously a huge red flag on the injuries. Given his talent and the poop show he had in NO (Zion & cheap ownership), I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mid-late career surge…obviously it is going to depend on his health and team success.

They are just a very vocal minority. Several polls out show only 10% are unhappy.

[ciueli]

Here are the main reasons I'm not so positive about Brandon Ingram.

- Not the defensive wing stopper we need, 26th defensive efficiency last season, 25th this season), the defence is bad enough as it is, adding him with IQ and Barrett at the 1 and 2 will make this even worse, we have no starter who can credibly defend star guards or swings on opposing teams.
- Not the floor spacing 3 point shooter we need, averaged only 3.8 3 point attempts per game last season, prefers to shoot midrange 2s, around 50% of his shots are midrange 2s which are inefficient and will prevent the team from working hard to get better high efficiency shots.
- Injured all the time, only played 70 games in a season once, his rookie season, this season has only played 18 games.
- Pay package means making compromises in other areas of team construction that are important, bench becomes more important with an injury prone player like him.
- His position in the starting lineup likely means fewer minutes for developing players including this year's draft pick and guys like Ja'Kobe, Dick, and Agbaji.
- Last playoff appearance he was horrible putting up 34.5% FG%, 25% 3PT%, averaged 14.3PPG, 4.5RPG, 3.3APG in a 4 game series, he wasn't even the Pels' second best player in that series and that was with Zion out.

[tsherkin]

Here are the main reasons I'm not so positive about Brandon Ingram.

- Not the defensive wing stopper we need, 26th defensive efficiency last season, 25th this season), the defence is bad enough as it is, adding him with IQ and Barrett at the 1 and 2 will make this even worse, we have no starter who can credibly defend star guards or swings on opposing teams.

He isn't bad on D, and we have Barnes. We can build defense in a variety of ways. With more scoring ability around, we can have Scottie scale back and focus more on defense. That'll address forwards about as successfully as we can.

- Not the floor spacing 3 point shooter we need, averaged only 3.8 3 point attempts per game last season, prefers to shoot midrange 2s, around 50% of his shots are midrange 2s which are inefficient and will prevent the team from working hard to get better high efficiency shots.

So this is just flatly wrong. He already has 2 seasons in the books at 38%+ on 6+ 3PA/g, and when he's played this year, he was over 6 3PA/g and over 37% from 3. He has all the 3pt shooting we need from him. It would be challenging to be more incorrect here, despite what happened in the two previous seasons. We will ask him to shoot, and he has clearly demonstrated the ability to do it at the level we require.

- Injured all the time, only played 70 games in a season once, his rookie season, this season has only played 18 games.

This is certainly the focal concern.

- His position in the starting lineup likely means fewer minutes for developing players including this year's draft pick and guys like Ja'Kobe, Dick, and Agbaji.

Ingram's a forward; you just named three guards. They're all like 6'5, 6'6. Ingram doesn't threaten their position at all. If they get good enough, they can displace RJ. And we still need some solid bench minutes from guys.

- Last playoff appearance he was horrible putting up 34.5% FG%, 25% 3PT%, averaged 14.3PPG, 4.5RPG, 3.3APG in a 4 game series, he wasn't even the Pels' second best player in that series and that was with Zion out.

He's played 10 games in the playoffs, ever. Then last year, he played the OKC Thunder, the 4th-ranked D in the league. Without Zion. He was one game back from injury when the playoffs began. He had 2 good games, and 2 bad ones.

Remember, he opened 5/17, then shot 5/10, 7/14, then 2/14. He had a brutal game 4, but that was actually a pretty reasonable series overall. Not an amazing close-out performance, but the Pels were not a good team and he clearly also wasn't fully healthy.

[MEDIC]

I’m surprised people opposed to the trade aren’t at least hedging their bets. None of us know what is going to happen and it seems likely he doesn’t even play this season.

The GROAT arrived in Toronto at 26 and didn’t make an AS game until 28 but then proceeded to make 6 consecutive.

BI arrives more individually accomplished, but obviously a huge red flag on the injuries. Given his talent and the poop show he had in NO (Zion & cheap ownership), I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mid-late career surge…obviously it is going to depend on his health and team success.

Yeah, he is a fantastic reclamation project. The fact that they got him for so cheap made the deal even more exciting.

It certainly makes the team interesting again. Not only for the fans & media locally, but for the whole league. I think there will be a lot of interest in BI & how he performs in Toronto from outside media outlets. Unless the somehow drafted Flagg, there wasn't going to be any interesting storylines attached to this team going into next season (without BI)

I agree with everything you said here.

[Thaddy]

I’m surprised people opposed to the trade aren’t at least hedging their bets. None of us know what is going to happen and it seems likely he doesn’t even play this season.

The GROAT arrived in Toronto at 26 and didn’t make an AS game until 28 but then proceeded to make 6 consecutive.

BI arrives more individually accomplished, but obviously a huge red flag on the injuries. Given his talent and the poop show he had in NO (Zion & cheap ownership), I wouldn’t be surprised to see a mid-late career surge…obviously it is going to depend on his health and team success.

Yeah, he is a fantastic reclamation project. The fact that they got him for so cheap made the deal even more exciting.

It certainly makes the team interesting again. Not only for the fans & media locally, but for the whole league. I think there will be a lot of interest in BI & how he performs in Toronto from outside media outlets. Unless the somehow drafted Flagg, there wasn't going to be any interesting storylines attached to this team going into next season (without BI)

I agree with everything you said here.

Ingram is the best reclaimation project in the league. The best way forward is to hold him out this year or play him in spurts. The focus should be on adding muscle to his frame and training him for future injury prevention. He is likely back before the end of the year but a minute cap at 20-28 minutes a game is what we should be going for.

[tsherkin]

Ingram is the best reclaimation project in the league. The best way forward is to hold him out this year or play him in spurts. The focus should be on adding muscle to his frame and training him for future injury prevention. He is likely back before the end of the year but a minute cap at 20-28 minutes a game is what we should be going for.

Adding muscle is probably not a wise idea. Extra weight = extra stress on his already-rough joints.

Working on strength is one thing, but he shouldn't be looking to add weight at all.

[ciueli]

Here are the main reasons I'm not so positive about Brandon Ingram.

- Not the defensive wing stopper we need, 26th defensive efficiency last season, 25th this season), the defence is bad enough as it is, adding him with IQ and Barrett at the 1 and 2 will make this even worse, we have no starter who can credibly defend star guards or swings on opposing teams.

He isn't bad on D, and we have Barnes. We can build defense in a variety of ways. With more scoring ability around, we can have Scottie scale back and focus more on defense. That'll address forwards about as successfully as we can.

He is a swing, he will be a player who has to guard other swings. The fact is we don't have a good defensive starter at the 1, 2, or 3 spot, that is a massive liability on defence, no question. In our starting lineup the only good defenders we will have are Scottie and Jak, that is not going to be enough to be a competent defensive team, Jak isn't even that good really, he's not a lockdown defender or anything. Expect this team to be about where they are on defence this year (bottom 6) or possibly even worse as better defenders (Agbaji, Shead) have their minutes cut.

- Not the floor spacing 3 point shooter we need, averaged only 3.8 3 point attempts per game last season, prefers to shoot midrange 2s, around 50% of his shots are midrange 2s which are inefficient and will prevent the team from working hard to get better high efficiency shots.

So this is just flatly wrong. He already has 2 seasons in the books at 38%+ on 6+ 3PA/g, and when he's played this year, he was over 6 3PA/g and over 37% from 3. He has all the 3pt shooting we need from him. It would be challenging to be more incorrect here, despite what happened in the two previous seasons. We will ask him to shoot, and he has clearly demonstrated the ability to do it at the level we require.

So what you're saying is that I'm not incorrect at all? Because you have to go all the way back to 2020-21 to see a season where he played at least 60 games and attempted 6+ 3s per game on a decent percentage? That's the point I'm making, what prevented him from attempting more than 4 3s a game from 2021 to 2024? Just blame the Pels for misusing him I guess? Probably more like he prefers operating in that in between area because he gets fewer contests on his shots, but also doesn't get the benefit of 3 pointers, and also doesn't draw a lot of fouls (only 4.9 FTA for his career). Say what you want about DeMar DeRozan and his midrange game, but at least he made up for it a bit by getting to the line consistently (lot of seasons with 8+ FTA per game).

- Injured all the time, only played 70 games in a season once, his rookie season, this season has only played 18 games.

This is certainly the focal concern.

And yet we paid him a player friendly contract that gives him $40M/year and full control of his career going forward if he does break out. And we didn't even get to see him play a single game with our core to see if the fit is good and they can win games. Ridiculous.

- His position in the starting lineup likely means fewer minutes for developing players including this year's draft pick and guys like Ja'Kobe, Dick, and Agbaji.

Ingram's a forward; you just named three guards. They're all like 6'5, 6'6. Ingram doesn't threaten their position at all. If they get good enough, they can displace RJ. And we still need some solid bench minutes from guys.

You should tell that to Darko since he plays Scottie as a guard while slotting in Barrett as a PF. Realistically we use Agbaji as an SF, all of Barrett, Agbaji, Ja'Kobe, and Gradey play SF for part of their minutes because they are on the floor at the same time, we aren't exclusively playing all four of those playes at SG 100% of the time.

- Last playoff appearance he was horrible putting up 34.5% FG%, 25% 3PT%, averaged 14.3PPG, 4.5RPG, 3.3APG in a 4 game series, he wasn't even the Pels' second best player in that series and that was with Zion out.

He's played 10 games in the playoffs, ever. Then last year, he played the OKC Thunder, the 4th-ranked D in the league. Without Zion. He was one game back from injury when the playoffs began. He had 2 good games, and 2 bad ones.

Remember, he opened 5/17, then shot 5/10, 7/14, then 2/14. He had a brutal game 4, but that was actually a pretty reasonable series overall. Not an amazing close-out performance, but the Pels were not a good team and he clearly also wasn't fully healthy.

It's not a reasonable series when he averaged 14.3PPG and was supposed to be the main scorer on his team you know, what Brandon Ingram is supposed to be good at, the entire reason for his value as a player. When he can't even do that in a playoff series, why are we spending $40M/year on him? I already know the answer, because Masai and Bobby are desperate to save their jobs and didn't really have another option for something to do with the Brown + Olynyk contracts. They're building this team in a haphazard way, just grabbing "talent", even if its talent that doesn't fit our team and talent that is damaged goods. I don't see it ending well for us outside of some serious lottery luck this year.

[tsherkin]

He is a swing, he will be a player who has to guard other swings. The fact is we don't have a good defensive starter at the 1, 2, or 3 spot, that is a massive liability on defence, no question.

This assumes Scottie at the 4 the entire time, so it isn't entirely correct. And again, Ingram isn't a bad defender, he just isn't threatening the All-D teams.

So what you're saying is that I'm not incorrect at all? Because you have to go all the way back to 2020-21 to see a season where he played at least 60 games and attempted 6+ 3s per game on a decent percentage?

We're assuming he plays 60+ games. The reduced volume from two seasons doesn't outweigh the two seasons prior to that, nor how he was playing when he was on the court this year.

Say what you want about DeMar DeRozan and his midrange game, but at least he made up for it a bit by getting to the line consistently (lot of seasons with 8+ FTA per game).

I mean, no, not really. DeRozan "made up for it" by posting comparable efficiency to Ingram. He didn't become efficient until he left us, so it was really "six of one, half a dozen of the other" between the two. Only he didn't have the 3pt range at all. And it took several years before DeRozan caught himself up to league average efficiency as his volume increased. So he isn't a particularly good example to draw. He was surely excellent at getting to the rim, but because he was below average at actually making shots and had no 3pt range, it ultimately didn't much matter.

And yet we paid him a player friendly contract that gives him $40M/year and full control of his career going forward if he does break out. And we didn't even get to see him play a single game with our core to see if the fit is good and they can win games. Ridiculous.

I'm not sure why you're arguing here; I was agreeing that his health is a concern for us.

You should tell that to Darko since he plays Scottie as a guard while slotting in Barrett as a PF.

Barrett doesn't guard anyone of consequential size, we know this. Scottie handling doesn't make him a guard.

Realistically we use Agbaji as an SF, all of Barrett, Agbaji, Ja'Kobe, and Gradey play SF for part of their minutes because they are on the floor at the same time, we aren't exclusively playing all four of those playes at SG 100% of the time.

Sure. Most players don't play exclusively at one specific position. My point was that there is room for this not to be an issue at all.

It's not a reasonable series when he averaged 14.3PPG and was supposed to be the main scorer on his team you know, what Brandon Ingram is supposed to be good at, the entire reason for his value as a player. When he can't even do that in a playoff series, why are we spending $40M/year on him?

And again, over a 4-game sample where two of them were good, and within the context of 10 total games played in the playoffs, you're overreacting. Badly. It's possible that he proves to be a crap playoff performer, but it's equally possible that 2 games don't define his postseason ability.

[Thaddy]

Ingram is the best reclaimation project in the league. The best way forward is to hold him out this year or play him in spurts. The focus should be on adding muscle to his frame and training him for future injury prevention. He is likely back before the end of the year but a minute cap at 20-28 minutes a game is what we should be going for.

Adding muscle is probably not a wise idea. Extra weight = extra stress on his already-rough joints.

Working on strength is one thing, but he shouldn't be looking to add weight at all.

At 180lbs at his height he is really frail. Ingram and several of our guys need to add strength, muscle mass, and condition their lower body. If you see any of the best perimeter defenders in the league they have strong lower bodies, it gives them a center of gravity and protects their joints.

If you look at Ingrams prior knee injury, his leg gave out and buckled from a non contact injury. That spells out a strength, conditioning, and muscular issue in his lower body.

I've seen the same problem with athletes who have had ACL injuries. If you put them in a dorsi flexion position they likely have a problem where their knee is instable.

[tsherkin]

At 180lbs at his height he is really frail. Ingram and several of our guys need to add strength, muscle mass, and condition their lower body. If you see any of the best perimeter defenders in the league they have strong lower bodies, it gives them a center of gravity and protects their joints.

If you look at Ingrams prior knee injury, his leg gave out and buckled from a non contact injury. That spells out a strength, conditioning, and muscular issue in his lower body.

I've seen the same problem with athletes who have had ACL injuries. If you put them in a dorsi flexion position they likely have a problem where their knee is instable.

Right, but what I'm saying is his early focus shouldn't be adding weight, it should be strengthening the weak eras. After that sort of rehab is done, then they are more capable of supporting weight. I agree he needs some strength training, but strength before weight should be the priority, because if he adds weight too fast, he'll make it worse for himself.

[Thaddy]

At 180lbs at his height he is really frail. Ingram and several of our guys need to add strength, muscle mass, and condition their lower body. If you see any of the best perimeter defenders in the league they have strong lower bodies, it gives them a center of gravity and protects their joints.

If you look at Ingrams prior knee injury, his leg gave out and buckled from a non contact injury. That spells out a strength, conditioning, and muscular issue in his lower body.

I've seen the same problem with athletes who have had ACL injuries. If you put them in a dorsi flexion position they likely have a problem where their knee is instable.

Right, but what I'm saying is his early focus shouldn't be adding weight, it should be strengthening the weak eras. After that sort of rehab is done, then they are more capable of supporting weight. I agree he needs some strength training, but strength before weight should be the priority, because if he adds weight too fast, he'll make it worse for himself.

He's 185lbs at most. You can't add strength without gaining weight when you're that frail. Adding muscle mass to his lower body around his knees and posterior chain will make his joint more stable and less prone to buckling.

You can see that here

Watch on YouTube