Raptors announce Las Vegas Summer League 2021 schedule

After an impossible 2020 and a rough 2021, the NBA is gradually getting its annually scheduled events back together — and the Raptors are set to join in. With the NBA Draft due for tomorrow, and the free agency period after that, the third event of the off-season has now been set: the Las Vegas Summer League!

From August 8 to 17 at the venerable Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion on the UNLV campus, the Raptors will join the rest of the league’s teams for a mini-tourney in which they’ll all play five games apiece. As per this shortened format, after playing four games, the best two teams will meet for a Championship Game (no small thing) on August 17. Everyone else will just get to play a fifth game and be done with it.

The Toronto Raptors announced Wednesday their schedule for MGM Resorts NBA Summer League 2021, which will take place Aug. 8-17 at Thomas & Mack Center and Cox Pavilion on the campus of the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Here’s the Raptors’ Summer League schedule for 2021:

The event in Vegas is nowadays a sizable event on the NBA’s calendar, but it wasn’t always so. Case in point: this is the Raptors’ 13th appearance since 2006, e.g. they skipped a few years in there. As of late, this is the place where now-cornerstone Raptors, including Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet, made their pro debuts. Back in 2019, Toronto managed a 2-3 record before bowing out — but this year we’ll likely get to see a young squad led by sophomore Malachi Flynn and (presumably) the incoming fourth overall peak in the 2021 NBA Draft.

If that’s not enticement enough to watch, I’m not sure what else could be.