Pressure will be on Sixers when they renew playoff rivalry with Raptors

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