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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – The Toronto Raptors have every reason to feel good about their season, but they’re still not satisfied, not yet anyway.

It took the franchise two decades to produce a 48-win campaign, something that it accomplished for the first time back in 2013-14, the season that launched the most successful run in team history. It’s no small thing. That they’ve done it this season, finishing 48-34 during what was supposed to be a development year, the first of the post-Kyle Lowry era, is an impressive feat on its own.

However, to borrow a line from former Raptor Goran Dragic, they’ve got higher ambitions. This young Raptors team believes they can accomplish even more, and they’ll have a chance to show it when they open their first-round playoff series with the 76ers in Philadelphia on Saturday.

“I’ve been saying for about a month, we’re ready,” head coach Nick Nurse said ahead of his club’s regular season finale, an inconsequential 105-94 loss to the New York Knicks on Sunday. “We’re ready. We’ve seen all the coverages, we’ve seen everybody, we’ve seen all their stuff. We’re ready to go.”

“This has been a good team to coach, for sure. It’s been fun to watch them hang in there and get better. And I think we’ve got a chance, man. I think we’ve got a chance to keep on rolling.”

A few months ago, the odds of Toronto making it out of the play-in tournament seemed low, let alone actually making noise in the playoffs. Even the most optimistic pre-season projections had them as a .500 team. Their over-under for wins was set at 36.5, a mark they would end up sailing past in early March.

They were 14-17 and in 11th place in late December after a team-wide COVID outbreak hit and threatened to derail the season, like it did a year ago in Tampa Bay. Instead, they rallied, going 34-17 the rest of the way. From that point on, their defence, which had been ranked 21st, was sixth best in the league.

They clinched their eighth postseason berth in nine years with a win over the Atlanta Hawks last week. They were in contention for a top-four seed and home-court advantage in the opening round until the penultimate day of the regular season, before a Philadelphia win locked them into the fifth seed on Saturday.

Now, the Raptors and Sixers are set to renew their long-time rivalry. It’s the third time that these teams will meet in the playoffs, and after the first two both went seven games and came down to one final last-second shot, the bar has been set awfully high.

18 years after Vince Carter attended his graduation on the morning of Game 7 and then missed the shot that could have sent Toronto to its first Conference Finals back in 2001, Kawhi Leonard exorcized the franchise’s demons, hitting an eerily similar shot from the opposite corner to break the Sixers’ hearts and keep the Raptors’ season alive.

The pressure was on the Raptors that night and throughout the series. They were the more experienced team and the higher seed. They were the team with the best player on the floor and the title expectations.

Philly was not to be taken lightly either. They had just brought in Jimmy Butler and Tobias Harris to fortify their young all-star duo of Joel Embiid and Ben Simmons. The silver lining, even after Leonard’s iconic Game 7 buzzer beater put an end to their season and turned out to be the catalyst for the Raptors’ championship run, was that their competitive window would likely give them at least a few more kicks at the can.

Both teams have undergone significant changes over the past three years. Only two Raptors players who appeared in that series remain: Fred VanVleet, who had the lowest moments of his professional career in those seven games, and Pascal Siakam (OG Anunoby didn’t play in the 2019 title run after having an emergency appendectomy on the eve of the playoffs). Danny Green, who started for Toronto in that series, is on his third team since and now plays for Philadelphia.

Given the age and contractual status of Toronto’s prominent players at the time, the changeover was not especially surprising. That Philadelphia is nearly as unrecognizable three years later was not something that most people would have seen coming.

Butler left for Miami that summer, and while Embiid and Simmons did get a couple more chances to make it work together, they never did get past the second round. Doc Rivers was brought in to replace Brett Brown on the bench. The relationship with Embiid and Simmons, and then the organization and Simmons, deteriorated to the point that the talented but enigmatic guard forced a trade out of Philly. Eventually, James Harden was acquired from the Brooklyn Nets to replace him and do what Simmons and all those other Sixers teams couldn’t do.   

This time, the pressure is squarely on Philadelphia.

Don’t get things twisted, the Raptors aren’t just happy to be here. They feel like they belong, they’ve shown it against elite teams all year, and they’re looking forward to proving it under the bright lights of the postseason. Still, there is the sense that they’re playing with house money.

If you would’ve asked them what would make for a successful season back in training camp, they probably wouldn’t have mentioned wins and losses at all, and they may not have even used the word playoffs.

They would have talked about the development of Scottie Barnes, their prized fourth-overall pick, who has gone on to have a spectacular freshman season worthy of Rookie of the Year consideration. They would have talked about getting Siakam back to his pre-pandemic form – he’s done that and then some, re-establishing himself among the very best players in the NBA. They would’ve talked about ensuring a smooth transition from Lowry to VanVleet, who’s embraced the leadership role and blossomed into an all-star. Anunoby has taken another step, even though his season was mired by injuries, while Precious Achiuwa and Gary Trent Jr. have looked like foundational pieces.

There may be a learning curve for some of these guys who are about to experience playoff basketball for the first time, and that’s OK too. Simply getting those reps could be invaluable for their growth, individually and collectively as a team. Whatever happens from here, the season will be considered a resounding success.

The Sixers will be heavily favoured in the series, as they should be. They’ll have the best player on the floor in Embiid, who’s enjoying an MVP calibre season. They might even have the two-best players, depending on which version of Harden shows up, and on the status of his wonky hamstring.

They’ve looked like an elite team at points this season – at 32-15, they’re one of two East teams with a better record than Toronto since January 1 – and if Embiid and Harden can get on the same page and figure things out on the fly, they’re going to be very tough to beat in a seven-game series. However, their potential for implosion is higher than most teams that consider themselves championship contenders.

There are questions. Historically, the Raptors have matched up well against Embiid. They’re not going to shut him down; not at this stage of his career, but they’ve been able to get under his skin. Can he conquer Nurse’s wacky schemes and all the long, athletic defenders they’re going to throw at him to take over the series?

Will Harden be the saviour he was brought in to be, and if he’s not, how long before that relationship sours? Can Rivers keep up with Nurse’s in-series and mid-game adjustments? How much will they miss Matisse Thybulle, their best perimeter defender, who is not eligible to cross the border into Canada and play in Toronto due to his vaccine status, and has already been ruled out for Games 3 and 4?

We know this about the Raptors, who won the season series 3-1, including a couple victories over the last three weeks: they’re not afraid of Philly. The fan base has been clamouring for this series, not only because of that history between the two clubs, but because they do seem to match up well. But the team has insisted that they didn’t care who they wound up playing.

When they’re at or close to their best, they’ve shown they can hang with anybody. They’ve gotten this far by overcoming the odds, but they’re not done yet. Now’s their chance to prove that they’re ready for what comes next.

“I was expecting to be sitting here,” Nurse said. “When we started the season and everyone picked us 11th, I was like, ‘No way, this is a playoff team.’ I put those expectations on them all and the coaching staff, and here we are. I expected to be a playoff team, but I don’t expect to just be here. We’ve gotta play here in these playoffs. It’s gonna be a great experience for us, our guys need the experience, but like we always do, we’ve got to play to win.”