Toronto Raptors, professional basketball team and one of eight teams in the Central Division of the Eastern Conference of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Raptors play at the Air Canada Centre in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The team wears jerseys of red, purple, black, and silver.

The Raptors franchise joined the NBA in 1994 when the league awarded an expansion team franchise to a group headed by Toronto businessman John I. Bitove. As part of the same expansion, the NBA admitted another Canadian club, the Vancouver Grizzlies. The Raptors and Grizzlies became the league’s first Canadian teams since the Toronto Huskies competed in the 1946-47 campaign of the Basketball Association of America (BAA), the forerunner of the NBA.

In May 1994, the name Raptors—from the name of a carnivorous dinosaur—was selected for the club, and Isiah Thomas, a well-known former NBA player who won two NBA titles with the Detroit Pistons, was hired as general manager. Thomas named former Pistons assistant coach Brendan Malone as Toronto’s first head coach.

The Raptors won a coin toss with the Grizzlies for the right to the first pick in the 1995 NBA expansion draft, in which the new teams would each select one player from an existing NBA team. The Raptors selected guard B. J. Armstrong of the Chicago Bulls. They then traded Armstrong to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for forward Carlos Rogers and center Victor Alexander. In the regular draft of college players, the Raptors selected guard Damon Stoudamire. In the team’s inaugural season, Stoudamire led the Raptors in scoring with an average of 19 points per game, finished fifth in the league in assists with 9.3 per game, and won the rookie of the year award. The Raptors finished the season with a 21-61 win-loss record. In the 1996 NBA draft, the Raptors selected forward-center Marcus Camby, the college player of the year.

In 1997 Thomas left the Raptors to work as a basketball analyst for the National Broadcasting Company (NBC). His departure precipitated a shake-up in the team’s roster, including trades of both Stoudamire and Camby. The most highly regarded new player to join the team was guard Vince Carter, who won the rookie of the year award in the lockout-shortened 1999 season.