TORONTO – His teammates were all gone but Joel Embiid remained at his locker with his feet and ankles contained in ice, his head in his hands and his uniform still on.
“I never dreamed of this,” he mumbled to no one in particular.
And this from a guy who left Scotiabank Arena in tears the last time he was here.
The massive, gifted, charismatic Philadelphia 76ers centre had a nightmare evening against the Toronto Raptors, logging no points and four turnovers on 11 shots in 32 minutes. It was the first shutout of his NBA career.
Not all that surprisingly it came in a loss as Toronto continued its domination of the Sixers with a 101-96 win – their 14th straight in the regular season — that no one otherwise could have realistically seen coming given that Philadelphia arrived on a four-game winning streak and their lineup intact and the Raptors were missing not only Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green from their seven-game, second-round series win over Philadelphia last May, but current cornerstones Serge Ibaka (ankle) and Kyle Lowry (finger) as well as rotation pieces Patrick McCaw (knee) and Matt Thomas (finger).
We won’t really know what we need to know about the Philadelphia 76ers and the Toronto Raptors until April at the earliest, and likely well beyond that.
If there is any indisputable takeaway from the Raptors’ championship run is that for all the careful planning and projecting, destinies can flip on a few bounces – four to be exact, as the Sixers can tell you.
Destinies aren’t determined in November, but it seems safe to say that the Raptors are looking better all the time as they improved to 12-4 on the year and 7-0 at home even while they’ve been short-handed for most of the past three weeks.
“Yeah that was fun, that was fun. That was a good game, that’s a good win for us,” said Fred VanVleet who had 24 points and eight assists, including a clutch three with 3:10 to play and a pair of free throws with 11 seconds left that were sandwiched around a three-point play by Pascal Siakam with a minute to play that helped the Raptors come back from five down with four minutes to go.
Holding the Sixers scoreless over that stretch helped, too.
VanVleet had just 14 points total the series against Philadelphia – one of his career lows. The Sixers’ big lineup weren’t a factor on Monday.
“Obviously we know they’ll be there at the end of the season and to be close at the end is good reps for all of us, especially with Kyle and Serge out,” said VanVleet. “To get reps for guys that maybe wouldn’t get ‘em otherwise is big, it’s huge. We’ll try to build this momentum going forward.”
It might be the Sixers that are wondering where they go from here, at least if they have to come through Toronto again.
On paper, Philadelphia’s destiny looks secure, or at least predictable. As they took the floor in Toronto for the first time since Embiid left it after sobbing into Gasol’s shoulder following the Raptors’ dramatic Game 7 win, they still looked like a team with championship potential.
Having lost Jimmy Butler and JJ Redick in the free-agency process, the Sixers can at least take comfort in the fact that they are enormous, without a starter shorter than six-foot-five Josh Richardson, acquired from Miami in the wake of Butler’s departure. VanVleet was giving up nearly seven inches to the big-haired Sixer – more when hair was factored in.
Even OG Anunoby – the Raptors’ answer to the league’s over-sized wings – was looking up at six-foot-10 Ben Simmons. Norman Powell at six-foot-four was dwarfed by Tobias Harris at six-foot-eight and Siakam was left giving up 30 pounds in his wrestling match with Al Horford, signed as a free agent from Boston.
One thing that seems to have carried over? Embiid, who shot just 37 per cent against the Raptors in their second-round series and averaged only 17.6 points a game – or a full 10 points less than his regular-season average – remains spooked by Gasol and the Raptors’ collective ability to take him out of games seemingly at will.
“Defensively they’re everywhere,” said Embiid. “They’re so long and they make sure they pack the paint and tonight we made no shots and when you are not making shots and you play against a team like that, it’s really hard. But, we’ve got to get better, especially me.”
The Sixers lineup, centred around Embiid, is supposed to be built for the post-season which is one reason why Philadelphia – along with the Milwaukee Bucks – remain the popular picks to emerge from the East.
The Raptors were on no one’s pre-season list once Leonard left and given they were 11th on an ESPN ‘power-ranking’ published Monday despite being tied for fourth in wins, ranking in the top 10 offensively and defensively, and fourth in net rating while playing nearly half their games without Kyle Lowry (thumb) and Serge Ibaka (ankle).
Perceptions have been slow to change.
In normal circumstances, a visit from the Sixers would be an excellent chance to remind the rest of the NBA that they plan to be taken very seriously when things get serious.
But how much can be read into a game where the Raptors were so short-handed?
Only so much, you would think. Unless the Raptors’ emerging replacement parts looked absolutely comfortable in a game where the volume in the arena reached playoff levels for the first time this year and Drake was in the house and you still got impressive contributions from unproven places.
Rondae Hollis-Jefferson chipping in with 16 points, 10 rebounds and three assists in 31 minutes off the bench and rookie Terence Davis tossed in 11 points in his 21-minute stint. Chris Boucher was scoreless in his 13 minutes but was able to make a positive contribution regardless.
“We executed our schemes really well, obviously on certain players, Embiid especially,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse.
“But yeah, Rondae, Terence, Chris all made some plays, pretty good and I kind of just liked our composure.
“I thought all game long, even though we didn’t shoot a very good percentage, I thought we were composed on offence and kept getting good shots, decent shots. We never really were panicked, we didn’t seem frustrated at the offensive end and whoever was out there …”
The Raptors were a fairly ordinary 45.2 per cent from the floor and only went 11-of-34 from deep, but held the Sixers to 40.9 per cent shooting.
A concern for Philly?
It wasn’t only Embiid who seems to get spooked against Toronto. Simmons was held to a single field goal through the first two quarters as the Raptors enjoyed a hard-earned 51-49 lead at half. The Sixers’ putative point guard was better in the second half as he finished with 10 points, 14 assists and nine rebounds – but his inability to shoot gives the Raptors license to send bodies at Embiid and his turnover woes against the Raptors weren’t Kawhi Leonard-related as he made seven of those in his 41 minutes of floor time. His most egregious was an ill-advised pass from half court on what looked to be an emerging 2-on-1 with Philadelphia trailing by one that was intercepted by Pascal Siakam, who finished with 25 points and seven rebounds, two blocks and the game-sealing steal.
Simmons and Embiid are the cornerstones of The Process – their extensive, bottom-scraping rebuild – and they are both flawed superstars who don’t seem to fit well together and have yet to prove themselves in the post-season.
It’s got to be nagging concern for Philadelphia, whether they ever want to acknowledge it or not.
If there was anything that can be gleaned from a Monday night game in November against a once, and quite possibly future playoff rival, it’s that the Raptors don’t have to guess about what they’ll get when the lights come on in the playoffs.
“There’s gotta be a confidence. They’re the NBA champs,” said Sixers head coach Brett Brown. “How can that not produce some level of confidence and extra boost on how they perform? I would suspect that that’s some of it.”
Given a short-handed lineup featuring a collection of late picks and players that were never drafted, maybe that’s a lot of it.
The Raptors know what and who they are. The Sixers – and Embiid especially — are still trying to find out and they’re going to have to wait until May or June to do it.
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