Across the first few days of the NBA Playoffs, no star player has struggled quite like Brandon Ingram of the Toronto Raptors. And his own comments have only made the situation worse.
The Cleveland Cavaliers easily dispatched of the Raptors in the first two games of their series at home, winning both games by double digits.
One of the main reasons why is that Ingram, the team’s leading scorer this year at 21.5 PPG, has gone missing.
In Game 1, Brandon Ingram scored 17 points on 5-9 shooting from the foor. However, he inexplicably attempted just one shot in the entire second half. Afterwards, he called out coach Darko Rajaković for using him too much as a screener on offense.
One would think that Ingram and the Raptors would come out with a focused and purposeful attack to get their leading scorer more involved in Game 2 and he would respond. Instead, he scored just 7 points on 3-15 shooting from the field in a truly woeful performance.
And after Game 2 on TSN, even the hometown media personalities were letting him have it. Raptors analyst Leo Rautins called out Ingram saying that his Game 2 performance after demanding the ball publicly was inexcusable.
Leo Rautins criticizes Brandon Ingram after the Game 1 post-game callout:
“When the Raptors had Kawhi Leonard, did you ever hear him say, ‘You got to give me the ball’? He never said anything like that in public.”
“When you’re an All-Star, you get the ball. You go get it. You… https://t.co/O6fFtHpcgG pic.twitter.com/lIsDoFzZEW
— Omer Osman (@OmerOsman200) April 21, 2026
“When the Raptors had Kawhi Leonard, did you ever hear him say, ‘Hey, you got to give me the ball’? He never said anything like that in public. When you’re an All-Star, you get the ball. You go get it. You make plays,” Rautins said.
“And if you think about the pressure that he just put on himself under, publicly saying, ‘I need shots.’ You put pressure on a coach. Now coach has got to defend what he’s doing out there. Your teammates are answering questions about you, and why didn’t you get shots. You’re trying to win a playoff game. Now you put pressure on everybody, including yourself. And then the next game after that, you don’t deliver. You can’t do that. Not when you’re an All-Star, not when this is your job. You got to score, and you got to find ways to do it, and not look for excuses on those situations.”
Toronto will host Cleveland in Game 3 on Thursday where Brandon Ingram will hope to rebound and produce better numbers in front of his home crowd. In all honesty, it has nowhere else to go but up after the first two games of the series.
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