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TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – With Wednesday’s 109-99 win over the Orlando Magic – improving their record to 3-0 in the NBA bubble – the Toronto Raptors took another step towards locking down a top-2 seed in the Eastern Conference.

Their magic number is down to one. One more win – or one more loss for the Boston Celtics, who defeated Brooklyn on Wednesday – will make it official.

It’s basically a foregone conclusion at this point. With five seeding games left, the Raptors would have to lose out and the Celtics would need to win their remaining four contests just to finish the regular season with the same record and overtake them in the standings, via the head-to-head tiebreaker.

The Milwaukee Bucks can secure first place in the East with their next win – or a Toronto loss – so, barring something unforeseen, the Raptors will open the playoffs as the second seed. They can clinch as early as Friday, when they face the Celtics in a possible second-round preview.

“We wanna play and we’re gonna play to win that game,” head coach Nick Nurse said, looking ahead to Friday’s meeting with Boston following his team’s win over Orlando. “We’re gonna play our guys and we’re gonna play to win. That’s what we get out of bed for every day is to go get ‘em. So, I think whether it was a high leverage game or it’s a little less leverage game, we’re gonna treat it the same from a prep standpoint and from an effort standpoint.”

This was always the most likely scenario, with Toronto holding a comfortable three-game lead on Boston going into the restart, but a strong showing during opening week at Disney – as well as the Celtics losing two of their first four contests – has allowed the Raptors to pull away quickly.

It could pay dividends for them in the coming weeks and over the next few months, as the defending champs look to make another deep playoff run and return to the NBA Finals.

Theoretically, seeding should mean less in the bubble than it would under normal circumstances. But while home-court advantage doesn’t exist in the traditional sense – each game is played in one of three neutral gyms on the Disney campus - Nurse says, wait a minute, it may end up being a factor after all.

As the restart goes on, the NBA continues to experiment with the in-arena presentation to create more of an atmosphere for the “home team.” That includes 300 of the team’s fans appearing digitally on courtside video screens and the manufactured crowd noise that they’re piping into the facility. It’s not a substitute for playing in your own building and in front of 20,000 of your fans, but Nurse insists he notices a difference from the scrimmage games, when it was so quiet that he couldn’t even call plays without the other team overhearing them.

“There's crowd noise, you can see family members and coaches’ family members and players’ family members [on the screens], there is a sense of personal touch to it,” Nurse said. “It seems like they're tweaking a little bit more and more as they go here in the games, as they're learning things about how to put the game on in this setting,” Nurse said. “We're seeing familiar faces on those screens, and who knows what it'll evolve to here two months from now. So I don't want to discount the home court thing quite yet.”

In a top-heavy Eastern Conference, finishing with a top-2 seed also means avoiding a tough opponent in Round 1 – likely Philly or Indiana – in favour of a far more favourable matchup against sub-.500 Brooklyn or Orlando.

Although the 76ers have had a turbulent season, they’re loaded with talent and their size has been problematic for Toronto in the past. Like the Raptors, the Pacers have overcome injuries all year. Despite missing all-star Domantas Sabonis, they’re 3-0 in the bubble, with T.J. Warren averaging 39.7 points.

How drastic is the drop-off after the East’s top-6 clubs? Take the Magic’s last 26 hours, for instance. Orlando played 96 minutes of basketball in a back-to-back against Indiana and Toronto. They never led and their deficit was less than 10 points for just 14 and a half minutes.

The Raptors’ and their second-ranked defence dominated them in the opened half, leading by 20 points at break. While the Magic made a run in the third quarter, when Toronto took its foot off the gas, the game was never close and the result was never in doubt.

Marc Gasol continued to torture Magic centre Nikola Vucevic. OG Anunoby simply overpowered former Raptor Terrence Ross with his size and expanded offensive repertoire. Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet drained long threes, Kyle Lowry nearly recorded his quietest triple-double ever – finishing two points and one rebound shy – and the bench finally got going, with Norman Powell and Serge Ibaka each scoring in double figures.

Orlando is missing Jonathan Isaac, who suffered a torn ACL in his left knee on Sunday. The 22-year-old forward was blossoming into one of the league’s rising stars and premiere defenders before hyperextending that same knee back in January. It would have ended his season but the four-month hiatus allowed him to return and play limited minutes to open the restart.

At minimum, and even at less than 100 per cent, Isaac could have given Orlando another proven defender to throw at Pascal Siakam in a potential first-round series. His re-injury is a devastating blow to a team that was already lacking in high-end talent.

They have a few intriguing young pieces and are a well-coached team under Steve Clifford. They’re good enough to maybe take a game off the Raptors, like they did last year, but they simply don’t have enough talent to push them any further than that.

The Nets, who hold a half game lead on Orlando for seventh place, are even less daunting, as currently constructed. Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving are still recovering from their injuries and won’t be back until next season. Wilson Chandler opted out of the restart, while DeAndre Jordan, Spencer Dinwiddie and Taurean Prince also withdrew after testing positive for COVID-19. Those are six of Brooklyn’s nine highest paid players.

It’s a shame that the restart’s postseason format will reward two of Orlando, Brooklyn and Washington with playoff seeds, yet only one of Memphis, Portland, San Antonio, New Orleans and Phoenix – among the most fun and intriguing teams in bubble play so far – will get in through the West. Still, it works out pretty well for the Raptors.

Facing Orlando or Brooklyn instead of Indiana or Philadelphia could be the difference between a quick four or five-game first-round series and the gruelling six or seven-game battle that their second-round opponent – likely Boston or Miami – may have to contend with.

That their position in the standings is all but determined, and should soon by officially locked up, also helps them prepare for a long playoff run. Now, Nurse has the luxury to use these final five seeding games to tinker with lineups and schemes, manage the minutes of his regulars, and maybe even give his veterans a night or two off.

It’s about finding a balance. You want to allow guys to continue ramping their conditioning up after such a long layoff and go into the playoffs in rhythm – individually and collectively as a team – but you’d also like to mitigate risk and do what you can to keep everybody as healthy as possible.

Considering some teams are fighting for their playoff lives each time they take the court for one of these seeding games, the Raptors have put themselves in an enviable position. They’ve earned it, not just with their impressive play in the bubble, but with their body of work throughout the course of a remarkable campaign.

“I don't think we're really worried about [seeding],” Powell said. “We're worried about ourselves and getting to the point where we need to be. We like how we’ve been playing as a team as a unit, trying to build on the foundation that we had before the season ended with the hiatus. I don’t think this team is really worried about where we play in terms of seeding, as long as we're at the level that we want to play at going into the playoffs.”