Toronto Raptors and Canada Basketball Announce Partnership

The Canadian Senior Women’s Basketball Team will wear the Raptors logo on their shorts in upcoming international games.

On Wednesday it was announced that the Toronto Raptors and the Canada Basketball program are furthering their partnership as the Senior Women’s National Team heads into Olympic Qualifying Tournaments. The team will now have the Toronto Raptors logo featured on their uniforms in upcoming games.

MLSE is Canada Basketball’s longest standing supporter, and the Women’s program in particular — this partnership is a visual representation of the relationship.

The Senior Women’s team is currently ranked 5th in the World by FIBA and is coming off a fourth place finish at the Women’s World Cup in 2022. They will be starting their journey to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics next week.

This announcement comes as several members of the SWNT are in Toronto this week for training camp. The team will then depart for Miami, before heading to Colombia next week to play in the first of two qualifying tournaments. Kia Nurse, Bridget Carleton and Laeticia Amihere were in attendance at last night’s Raptors game against the Milwaukee Bucks to announce the partnership.

For years, the Senior Women’s National Team and the Raptors have had close ties. The team often uses the team’s facilities to practice and hold camps, and even yesterday the team was at MLSE launchpad working with young basketball players.

The team will play in a group of four teams — Canada, Colombia, Puerto Rico and Venezuela — next week, with the top two teams from the tournament heading to the next round. If Canada finishes first in the group, they will head to Hungary in early 2024 , and if they finish second they will head to China for their qualifying tournament.

From there, Canada will have be one of the top 12 teams in these groups to qualify for the 2024 Paris Olympics, and to join the Canadian Men’s team who qualified while at the World Cup this summer.

Now that the WNBA season is over, the Canadian team will have players like Kia Nurse, Natalie Achonwa, Bridget Carleton and Laeticia Amihere — who all play for WNBA teams. They will also call players from the EuroLeague to come over. The team has not announced the official roster for next week’s tournament yet.