Raptors hope past success against Embiid carries into playoff series

TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – Let’s get this out of the way: there’s no stopping Joel Embiid.

Toronto can’t do it. No team can do it – not at this stage of his career anyway. He’s simply too good.

Embiid is better than he was when the Raptors neutralized him in six of the seven games during their iconic second-round playoff series with Philadelphia in 2019. He’s better than he was when they held him scoreless for the first and only time in his six-year career the following season.

The 76ers superstar is fresh off a specular campaign. He just became the first centre to win the NBA’s scoring title since Shaquille O’Neal did it more than two decades ago and will be a leading candidate for this year’s MVP award, along with fellow big men Nikola Jokic and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

The best you can hope for is to slow him down, make him work to get to his spots and establish position, and maybe frustrate him in the process. To his admission, nobody has done a better job of that over the years than Nick Nurse and the Toronto Raptors.

“Toronto is the only team that really just doesn’t allow me to [have the ball in my hands],” Embiid told ESPN’s Zach Lowe on his podcast in April of 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.”

That will be the plan of attack once again, as the Raptors open their first-round series against Embiid and the 76ers in Philadelphia on Saturday.

There’s a quiet confidence from the team, and a less quiet confidence from its fan base going into this familiar matchup – a sense that Toronto is well positioned to upset the fourth-seeded Sixers. It starts with their recent track record of success against