Raptors’ valiant comeback bid falls short but series epitomized their season

TSN Raptors Reporter

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TORONTO – The Raptors were still coming to terms with their unenviable reality the morning after that heartbreaking Game 3 loss to Philadelphia last week.

They had been in control for most of the night, trailing for the first time early in the overtime period. When Joel Embiid’s turnaround jumper went down, they knew that they had let the game, and maybe the series, slip away.

“It actually sticks to you,” Chris Boucher said.

“I couldn’t sleep that night,” Precious Achiuwa, who missed two key free throws at the end of regulation, recently told TSN’s Kayla Grey.

Instead of leaving Scotiabank Arena with what would have been a momentum-shifting win, the Raptors fell behind 3-0 in their first-round playoff series, a deficit from which no team in the history of the NBA has ever overcome.

When Nick Nurse met with his players the following day, Toronto’s head coach delivered a speech that should have resonated with everybody in the room.

His message: “If somebody could do it, it’d be us.”

A week later, their valiant comeback bid finally came to an end, with the Sixers closing out the series and eliminating them in six games. But even after coming up short, the sentiment still rings true. In a series that would ultimately epitomize their remarkable season, the Raptors showed their character.

“I mean, listen, they’re disappointed, for sure,” Nurse said after Thursday’s 132-97 loss. “Pretty heavy air in there. My message was that, as a whole, I thought we went through a tremendous amount this year with a number of things and we just kept fighting and kept playing and kept getting better and kept figuring things out… I give them a lot of credit for that, hanging in there.”

Expectations were