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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – It’s hard to fathom, that the team featuring an MVP frontrunner and a former MVP might be Toronto’s most favourable first-round opponent, but maybe it’s not as crazy as it sounds.

If the Philadelphia 76ers end up figuring it out on the fly, with Joel Embiid and James Harden and all of that talent, they could be scary. The Raptors aren’t afraid of them, though, and they showed that again on Thursday.

Having clinched a top-six seed and guaranteed playoff spot a couple nights earlier, they opted to rest Fred VanVleet and his ailing knee. OG Anunoby was still out nursing a bruised thigh. Toronto missed 10 of its first 11 shots, fell behind 17-2 early, and allowed Philadelphia to shoot 19-for-36 from three-point range on the night. Still, in a possible playoff preview between the two teams, and in a game that should have meant more to the visitors, the Raptors came out with the win.

“Heck of a game,” Nick Nurse said after his club’s 119-114 victory. “Great energy in the building, guys that were out there did a good job, got contributions all over the place, and Pascal [Siakam] was awesome.”

Historically, the Raptors have matched up well against Philly. There’s a rivalry there, one that’s been building since Kawhi Leonard’s Shot capped off an iconic seven-game series and sent them home back in 2019. Since then, Toronto has won seven of 11 meetings, including three of four this season, and no team has frustrated Embiid more.

“Toronto is the only team that really just doesn’t allow me to [have the ball in my hands],” the Sixers superstar centre said on a podcast with ESPN’s Zach Lowe last year. “Every single time we play them as soon as the ball is in the air they have three guys on me and won’t leave me alone.”

They used that formula again. Gone are the days when Nurse could just throw Marc Gasol on Embiid and have the former Defensive Player of the Year match his size and physicality. As currently constructed, the undersized Raptors don’t have a player that can handle him in single coverage. Instead, they have to be especially tied together defensively, denying him the ball, keeping him from getting deep post position, and sending multiple defenders on the catch.

There’s no stopping a player like Embiid. Even on a quiet night, by his standards, he scored 30 points, but he needed 22 shots to do it. Since the start of that second-round series in 2019, the Raptors have held him to 36 per cent shooting in 16 meetings. He’s shooting 50 per cent against everybody else over that span.

“We don’t have anyone on our team that matches him in size but we have quickness, we have speed and we have length, so we use that to our advantage,” said Precious Achiuwa, who served as the primary defender on Embiid and finished with 20 points and hit five of his seven three-point attempts. “We beat him to his spots, his spin move and counter move someone is right there, throwing a lot of bodies at him, showing different coverages, and making him work throughout the game.”

On the other side of the floor, the Sixers didn’t have an answer for Siakam, not that anybody has recently. The Raptors’ forward had 37 points, 11 rebounds and 12 assists – recording his third career triple-double and second in the span of eight days.

Tobias Harris started the game on him and had little chance. When the slower Georges Niang got the assignment, Siakam attacked him off the dribble. Embiid has defended him well in the past, but has a tendency to go under on screens and, on Thursday, Siakam made him pay with his pull-up jumper.

With Embiid on him inside the final two minutes, Siakam drove into the body of his countryman, got him to bite on a pump fake at the rim and then laid the ball up and in to put the game out of reach.

The Sixers’ best chance at slowing Siakam down was watching from his couch. Matisse Thybulle was ineligible to play in Toronto due to his vaccine status. As of January 15, the Canadian government has required players to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 in order to cross the border.

Assuming Thybulle is still considered unvaccinated, by those guidelines, in a couple weeks, and if these teams do meet up in the first round of the playoffs, Philly faces the possibility of being without their best perimeter defenders for all road contests in a seven-game series.

In addition to the many other reasons why Philly shouldn’t want to face Toronto, one of the league’s hottest teams and winners of seven of its last eight games, that’s a big one.

Philadelphia should’ve been highly motivated to win on Thursday. With Milwaukee’s win over Boston later in the evening, Miami clinched the top seed in the East. The Bucks, Celtics and Sixers currently sit second through fourth in the standings, respectively, but they’re separated by one game.

There are scenarios in which the Raptors could end up facing any of those three teams. However, Milwaukee and Boston both own the tiebreaker with Philly, making fourth place the most likely landing spot for the Sixers. Meanwhile, the Raptors are one more win or Chicago loss away from being locked in as the fifth seed.

The Celtics were 16-19 and in 10th place in late December. Since then, they’re 34-12, good for the third-best record in the NBA and tops in the East. They’ve got the league’s second-ranked offence and the best defence over that span. They’re flat-out crushing opponents, outscoring teams by 12.8 points per 100 possessions – the next-best mark is Memphis at 8.5.

Their defence took a hit with the loss of Robert Williams, who suffered a torn meniscus in his left knee last month and is not expected to be ready for the opening round of the playoffs. However, they still feature a leading candidate for Defensive Player of the Year in Marcus Smart, as well as one of basketball’s best two-way duos of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown on the wing.

Toronto and Boston split the season series, but three of those meetings came early in the campaign, before the Celtics caught fire. In the fourth, the Raptors’ 115-112 overtime win at home last Monday, Boston was without four of its five starters. That game was another reminder that regardless of who’s in the lineup for these two teams, and who isn’t, they play each other hard. There’s a history there, with the Celtics coming out of that competitive seven-game series in the bubble a couple years ago.

Simply put, nobody wants to face the conference’s hottest team, but the uncertainty surrounding their vaccine status makes them the wildcard matchup for the Raptors. While head coach Ime Udoka has said that his players would all be available to play in Toronto come playoff time, the Celtics declined to confirm that they were a fully vaccinated team to ESPN last month.

Last week’s meeting was Boston’s first trip to Canada since the vaccine guidelines changed for professional athletes crossing the border, and Tatum, Brown and Al Horford didn’t make the trip. It’s hard to glean much from that, given the Celtics were in the second night of a back-to-back, with Tatum and Brown battling minor injuries and Horford away from team for personal reasons.

For what it’s worth, Tatum has said that he’s vaccinated. Horford was less direct, but confirmed that he would be able to play in Toronto. Brown was asked about his status earlier this week and his response was cryptic.

“I’m excited and ready to play against anybody,” he told reporters. “As a VP of the Players Association, it’s part of my job to respect privacy. You won’t hear me comment.”

According to Gary Washburn of the Boston Globe, who cited an NBA source in his column over the weekend, “at least two frontline [Celtics] players are not vaccinated.”

There’s a case to be made that the Bucks are the toughest of the three potential matchups and, on top of that, they’re confirmed to be fully vaccinated.

Like Philly, the Raptors have historically had Milwaukee’s number. They swept the season series, although Giannis Antetokounmpo only played in one of the three meetings, and have knocked them out of the playoffs twice in the last five years, most notably in the 2019 Conference Finals.

A few things have changed since then, though. Nurse’s teams have had success in slowing down Antetokounmpo before, and the Raptors don’t lack for long and athletic defenders to throw at him, but the two-time MVP is better than ever. The biggest thing is that he and this Bucks core now have championship experience under their belt. We’ve seen what a difference that’s made for the young Raptors players that went through the 2019 title run. The reigning champs are dangerous.

While Philadelphia would be a heavy favourite in a series against Toronto, as would the other two teams, the Raptors have shown that they can hang with them. They won the possession battle handily on Thursday and attempted 16 more shots, a result of their 12 offensive rebounds and Philly’s 17 turnovers. Last month’s win in Philly followed a familiar script, as the Raptors grabbed 20 offensive boards and attempted 20 more shots. They held the Sixers to 88 points and Embiid to 6-of-20 shooting in that game.

The Raptors are a team that like to hunt mismatches on offence, and as long as Harden is out there, Philly will be susceptible to it. In the two meetings with Toronto since the Sixers acquired Harden at the trade deadline, the all-star guard combined to shoot 8-for-24 from the field and 1-for-8 from three-point range.

The Raptors aren’t likely to have a strong preference between their three potential opponents. They don’t seem to care where they finish or who they play – their decision to hold VanVleet out on Thursday, despite what was at stake in the standings, was a pretty good indication of that.

“I’m trying to find a reason why [we would prioritize fifth place] other than fifth sounds better than sixth,” Nurse said before the game. “But I think there’s so much uncertainty about it, and it doesn’t really matter anyway.”

When they’re at their best, they know they can compete with anybody, as they’ve shown all season. After clinching a playoff spot in Tuesday’s win over Atlanta their top priority immediately shifted to getting and staying healthy.

Nurse wouldn’t say whether VanVleet would play in either of two remaining regular season games, Friday against Houston and Sunday in New York. They’re going to take it day by day and err on the side of caution with his nagging knee injury. If they shut him down for the weekend, he’ll have 10 days off going into Game 1 of their opening-round series.

Meanwhile, the plan is for OG Anunoby to play in the season finale, allowing him to get his rhythm back going into the playoffs.

From there, they’re comfortable letting the chips fall where they may. The Raptors aren’t scared of anybody, it’s one of the reasons why they’ve done what they’ve done this season, but they’re most definitely not afraid of Philadelphia, nor should they be