against the new-look Atlanta Hawks<\/a>. Surprisingly enough, they\u2019ve opened up every season at home since 2011. They then head home for their season opener, hosting the Milwaukee Bucks. <\/p>\nSounds reasonable, right? Taking on two Eastern Conference opponents that went through some considerable transitions in the offseason. Toronto then hits the road for a quick back-to-back in Texas with the Dallas Mavericks and San Antonio Spurs. They then face the third Texas team, the Houston Rockets, back at home, capping off five games in eight days to start the regular season.<\/p>\n
And let\u2019s not forget capping off the October start on the road against the Cleveland Cavaliers on Halloween, who finished atop the East last year. <\/p>\n
Raptors fans need to brace for early adversity to kick off 2025-26 season<\/p>\n
November doesn\u2019t exactly let up as the Raptors take on another three back-to-backs. They\u2019ll square off against the Hawks, 76ers, Nets, Cavaliers, Hornets and Knicks, with two of the three on the road. Their Atlanta\/Philadelphia back-to-back at the beginning of the month kicks off one of three five-game road trips. The other two come in the new year, including more of their Western Conference foes.<\/p>\n
In total, the Raptors will play 15 back-to-backs with nine of them on the road and only six at home.<\/p>\n
This is a challenging start to the season that feels similar to last year\u2019s schedule. The Raptors found themselves in a very deep hole to start the 2024\/2025 campaign. They were hit with a 5-game road trip early in November, and by the 16th, Toronto found itself with a 2-12 record.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no such thing as a \u2018perfect schedule,’ as every other team will face tough schedules. The Raptors, however, will have to monitor minutes with their more injury-prone players. They won’t find a lot of time for rest, given such crammed weeks, including multiple stretches with three games in four days. <\/p>\n
All this being said, the schedule does somewhat balance itself out though the course of the season. February for example, only has three games on the road. <\/p>\n
It all comes back to the start of the season. And the Raptors can\u2019t find themselves behind the 8-ball again. With the Eastern Conference landscape looking very uncertain, it\u2019s paramount that Toronto start the season with some statement wins. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA released their 2025-26 schedules on Thursday, and it seems like the Toronto Raptors didn\u2019t get any…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":73205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-73204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73204","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}