Brandon Ingram contract extension: Raptors sign recently acquired forward to $120 million deal, per report

Brandon Ingram has yet to play a single game for the Toronto Raptors, but he has agreed to a three-year, $120 million contract, extension, his agents told ESPN’s Shams Charania Tuesday. The deal will include a player option for the 2027-28 season. 

Toronto acquired Ingram from the New Orleans Pelicans before last Thursday’s trade deadline. At a press conference the following day, general manager Bobby Webster told reporters, “Brandon wants to be here,” adding that “we’ve been able to talk to his agent and representatives” and both sides were “in the same ballpark” on the parameters of a potential extension.

The Raptors now have Ingram, Scottie Barnes, Immanuel Quickley and RJ Barrett under contract through at least the 2026-27 season. That year, Barnes will make a projected $41.8 million, Ingram a reported $40 million, Quickley $32.5 million and Barrett $29.6 million. Barrett will be eligible to sign an extension this summer, and wings Ochai Agbaji and Gradey Dick will be eligible to sign rookie-scale extensions in the 2025 and 2026 offseasons, respectively.

In other words, Toronto’s roster is about to get expensive, especially for a team that is ostensibly rebuilding. As Sportsnet’s Blake Murphy outlined after the trade deadline, an extension like this leaves the Raptors with little wiggle room beneath the luxury tax next season, particularly if they are fortunate enough to move up in the lottery and draft a higher-salaried rookie. (At 16-37, they currently have the league’s fifth-worst record.)

As presently constructed, that is. After seeing how Quickley, Barrett, Ingram, Barnes and Jakob Poeltl fit together, it is possible that the front office could move one of them. While Barrett has improved meaningfully since joining his hometown team last season, one could even view Ingram as insurance in the event that Barrett’s extension negotiations go poorly.

Ingram, 27, has not played since early December because of an ankle injury, and in his first media session after the trade, he told reporters that there was no timetable for his return. In 18 games for the Pelicans this season, he averaged 22.2 points (on 47-37-86 shooting splits), 5.6 rebounds and 5.2 assists and, crucially, made 40.8% of his catch-and-shoot 3s on 3.9 attempts per game.

There is no doubting Ingram’s talent. He made the All-Star team and won the Most Improved Player award in 2020, and he gave the Phoenix Suns problems in the first round of the 2022 playoffs, finishing one assist shy of a 37-point triple-double in a Game 2 victory on the road. There are questions, though, about his durability and his ability to fit in on a team like this. Those questions explain A) why the Raptors were able to acquire him for two reserves, a pick that will almost assuredly fall outside the lottery and a second-rounder; and B) why they were able to extend him for less than the max.

Ingram can only answer the durability questions by staying on the court once he returns from this ankle injury. In terms of fit, it should be seen as encouraging that he attempted 9.5 3-pointers per 100 possessions with New Orleans this season. That is a career-high mark, and it is 3.9 per 100 more than he managed last season. Ingram will be able to run pick-and-rolls in Toronto, but, given all the other playmakers on the team, he also needs to be comfortable spotting up from behind the 3-point line. By trading for Ingram and then giving him this extension, the Raptors are effectively betting that he’ll be a weapon both on and off the ball, and that he’ll be at worst a neutral, switchable defender. These moves also suggest that, while they aren’t exactly in win-now mode, they want to take a step forward next season.

Ingram is just the latest player to forgo becoming a free agent this coming summer. Now that he’s off the market, the list of potential free agents is even thinner. Fred VanVleet could be a free agent if the Houston Rockets decline their team option on the final season of his contract, and the Minnesota Timberwolves’ Julius Randle, the Los Angeles Clippers’ James Harden and the Dallas Mavericks’ Kyrie Irving all have player options. It is possible that Myles Turner of the Indiana Pacers will be the biggest name to become an unrestricted free agent. 

Even with star players increasingly changing teams via trade rather than free agency, this is an unusual situation. Given that only three teams — the Brooklyn Nets, Memphis Grizzlies and Detroit Pistons — are projected to have cap space in the summer, and the Nets are the only ones that will have enough to sign a contract that even comes close to the max, players like Ingram were highly incentivized to get an extension done.