Raptors tip-off season with a bang

The Toronto Raptors are having their feet held to the Eastern Conference fire right off the bat in the 2018-19 season.

The league announced its plans for Christmas Day games, those on Martin Luther King Day and United States nationally televised games for the first week of the season, and the Raptors are featured prominently in the latter.

Ahome game against Boston on Friday, Oct. 19, will be broadcast on ESPN in the United States at 8 p.m., and a game the next night at 7 p.m. in Washington will be televised on NBA TV.

Only the Houston Rockets, with three U.S. national broadcasts in the first week, have more than Toronto. The Los Angeles Lakers with LeBron James, the defending champion Golden State Warriors, Boston and Philadelphia are also featured twice.

The Raptors were shut out of the fivegame Christmas Day slate, which has Milwaukee at New York, Oklahoma City at Houston, Philadelphia at Boston, the Lakers at Golden State and Portland at Utah.

The three-game Martin Luther King Day games also don’t include the Raptors, who are expected to have a Dec. 5 home game to commemorate Nelson Mandela, an important project for team president Masai Ujiri.

The NBA will announce the full sched- ule on Friday afternoon, but the Boston game on Oct. 19 is widely expected to be Toronto’s home and season opener.

The Oct.16 opening day — Philadelphia at Boston and Oklahoma City at Golden State — is the earliest start to a season in more than 20 years.

With the NBA putting such a premium on rest and stretching out the regular season, it’s unlikely they would force the Raptors to play three games in four nights right out of the chute.

The game against the Celtics will pit two of the heavy Eastern Conference favourites against each other, and the game in Washington one night later is a rematch of last spring’s first-round playoff series.