Toronto Raptors are a professional basketball team that plays in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The team competes in the Atlantic Division of the Eastern Conference. The Raptors play in the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Toronto entered the NBA for the 1995-1996 season. The team had losing seasons until 1999-2000, when it made the playoffs for the first time. During the early 2000’s, the Raptors featured one of the NBA’s most exciting players in guard-forward Vince Carter. Carter was traded to the New Jersey (now Brooklyn) Nets in 2004. In 2006-2007, Toronto won its first Atlantic Division championship, led by forward Chris Bosh.
In the playoffs in 2016, the Raptors reached the conference finals for the first time, losing to the Cleveland Cavaliers for the conference championship. Toronto was led by high-scoring guards Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan. The Raptors had the best record in the Eastern Conference for the 2017-2018 regular season, winning 59 games. The team was eliminated by Cleveland in the second round of the playoffs. In 2018, DeRozan was traded to the San Antonio Spurs for forward Kawhi Leonard. The 2018-2019 team, led by Leonard, Lowry, and forward Pascal Siakam, won the Eastern Conference title and defeated the Golden State Warriors in the NBA finals.
Leonard left the Raptors in 2019, but the team returned to the playoffs following the 2019-2020 season. The Raptors played home games for the 2020-2021 season in Tampa, Florida. The team had been unable to reach an agreement with Canadian health authorities to allow teams to cross the border to play in Toronto during the COVID-19 pandemic.
