Grading the Brandon Ingram trade: Raptors get a talent, but the move raises questions about their plan

An awfully busy Wednesday in the NBA snuck one more big move in before the clock struck midnight ahead of Thursday's 3 p.m. ET trade deadline, with the New Orleans Pelicans reportedly trading forward Brandon Ingram to the Toronto Raptors in a deal that ends the All-Star forward’s tenure in Louisiana after five and a half seasons — and sets up some pretty interesting decisions come the summer.

ESPN’s Shams Charania reports the Raptors will receive Ingram in exchange for guard Bruce Brown Jr., center Kelly Olynyk, a first-round pick and a second-round pick. According to Blake Murphy of Sportsnet, the first-rounder is the Indiana Pacers’ top-four-protected 2026 pick, which accompanied Brown to Toronto in last year’s Pascal Siakam deal; his colleague Michael Grange reports that the second-rounder will come in 2031.

Let's grade the trade from each team’s perspective, starting north of the border:

Toronto Raptors: B

Team president Masai Ujiri and general manager Bobby Webster reportedly entered the deadline intent on adding “a significant piece” to kickstart the Raptors’ burgeoning rebuild, with an eye toward halting the franchise’s ongoing decline since the 2019 NBA championship and expediting its climb out of the East’s basement. (The Raptors sit at 16-35, in 13th place in the conference, after Wednesday’s blowout loss to the Grizzlies.) That search landed on Ingram, a spidery swingman with one All-Star nod under his belt and a smooth offensive game that reportedly left Ujiri “intrigued” as a potential complement for the playmaking of All-Star wing Scottie Barnes.

As a pure talent play, there’s a lot to like about Ingram, a gifted all-around scorer and improved facilitator who has averaged 23 points on 47/37/85 shooting splits, 5.5 rebounds and 5.2 assists per game over the past five seasons. There are reasons he spent most of the last year on the trade block, though.

He proved a shaky fit alongside a jumbo point forward with an iffy outside shot in Zion Williamson, which could rear its head again alongside Barnes. One manifestation of the fit issues: the half-court spacing congestion that often resulted from Ingram’s preference for working in the midrange rather than cranking up his 3-point volume, despite strong shooting numbers from the outside.

Ingram’s defensive effort has always left something to be desired when he’s on the court, given his 6-foot-8 frame, 7-foot-3 wingspan and quick feet. He’s also spent quite a bit of time off the court, missing 115 games over the past four seasons — and counting. (A high ankle sprain has kept Ingram on the shelf for the past two months … and, considering Toronto holds the NBA’s fifth-worst record and thus a 42.1% chance at a top-four pick in the 2025 NBA draft, maybe giving him some more time to rest up wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.)

It all adds up to a very good but not great player — an occasional fringe All-Star rather than a consistent All-NBA candidate — which is a pretty tricky type of player to build around under the new collective bargaining agreement. That led to a difference of opinion between Ingram, who’s in the final year of the five-year max extension he signed in 2020, and the Pelicans, who have never in their history paid the luxury tax (and who dipped under the tax earlier Wednesday by trading reserve center Daniel Theis to Oklahoma City), over what his next contract should look like.

That’s now Toronto’s problem to solve — and with Barnes’ maximum-salaried extension of his rookie-scale contract about to kick in, and with fellow starters Immanuel Quickley, RJ Barrett and Jakob Poeltl already on the books for just under $80 million next season, a potentially thorny one. Ingram is reportedly excited about the prospect of a fresh start in Toronto; one wonders, though, if a re-signed Ingram and Barrett would prove duplicative, putting the Raptors in a position where they’d need to try to flip RJ to better balance the roster.

Ingram’s eligible for an extension of up to three additional years and $144 million right now, if Ujiri and Webster want to go that route; if not, the Raptors now have his Bird rights, allowing them to go over the salary cap to retain him when he hits unrestricted free agency in July. Getting off the $13.4 million owed to Olynyk next season creates some more wiggle room under the luxury tax line for Toronto to be able to keep Ingram around … but it still puts the Raptors in line to foot an awfully steep bill for a starting five that looks somewhat ill-fitting, light on shooting, shaky defensively and perhaps not dramatically closer to Ujiri’s stated goal of getting the Raptors back in the mix for consistent contention.

"Sports is only about winning, and nobody cares about anything if you don't win,” Ujiri told reporters last summer. “You're irrelevant.”

Adding a talent like Ingram nudges that needle a smidge. Whether it does so enough to justify shelling out draft capital in the midst of what’s felt like an early-stage rebuild, though — and enough to be worth paying the 27-year-old well north of $40 million a year for the privilege — I’m not so sure.

New Orleans Pelicans: B

If you’re trading a star, you’d like to come away with salary relief, draft capital and projectable young talent. Well, two out of three ain’t bad.

Brown’s expiring contract will wipe $23 million off the Pelicans’ books come season’s end. Olynyk’s minutes and production have waned in his 13th season, but the 33-year-old remains a heady passer and reliable shooter (a career-high 47.4% from 3-point land this season, albeit on just 1.7 attempts a night) who could prove a helpful floor-spacer for Williamson for now, and whose $13.4 million contract for next season could serve as either matching salary in another transaction or another source of cost-savings when it expires in 2026.

The lightly protected Indiana first and far-future second help replenish the draft coffers after New Orleans sent out two firsts last summer for Dejounte Murray, who’s out for the season after rupturing his right Achilles tendon. And moving Ingram before he could return from the ankle sprain could help the injury-ravaged Pelicans — now 12-39, dead last in the West, with the second-worst record in the NBA — avoid accidentally getting competitive enough to win more games down the stretch than would be advisable from a ping-pong-ball perspective.

Perhaps the biggest benefit for the Pelicans, though, is clearing the path for Trey Murphy III to officially cement the elevated role in the Pelicans’ hierarchy that he’s ascended to amid New Orleans’ many injuries.

The fourth-year forward is in the midst of a breakout season, averaging 22.6 points, 5 rebounds and 3.1 assists per game, shooting 58% on 2-pointers, 38.2% on more than eight 3-point attempts per game and 89% from the foul line. Viewed largely as a floor-spacer early in his career, Murphy has blossomed into a bona fide all-court scorer capable of not just producing like a No. 1 option, but doing so on a modernized shot diet that dovetails more neatly with Williamson than Ingram’s did throughout their fraught and curtailed partnership.

With his four-year, $112 million extension set to kick in next season, the Pelicans needed to prioritize Murphy as a fixture in the starting lineup and offensive pecking order. Moving on from Ingram makes that easier and puts New Orleans in position to build around a core of Murphy, Williamson, Murray, defensive ace Herb Jones, rookie center Yves Missi and a high lottery pick in this loaded 2025 draft. That’s a pretty solid starting point for a return to postseason contention if the Pels can finally get the benefit of some good injury luck. It’s got to happen one of these years … right?