76ers vs. Raptors playoff preview: Toronto’s plan to stop Embiid, Harden’s production among things to watch

The No. 4 Philadelphia 76ers and No. 5 Toronto Raptors will face off in the first round of the 2022 NBA playoffs. The Sixers finished the regular season with a 51-31 record, while the Raptors went 48-34. For what it’s worth, Toronto won the regular-season series over the Sixers, 3-1.

The two teams have met in the postseason twice previously, both times in the conference semifinals. Philadelphia bested Toronto in 2001, while Toronto got some revenge in 2019. Both of those series went the full seven games, so if this year’s series is anything like the previous two, we can expect a battle.

Here’s a look at the full schedule and three main storylines for the best-of-seven series between Philly and Toronto.

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(4) Philadelphia 76ers vs. (5) Toronto Raptors

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Featured Game | Philadelphia 76ers vs. Toronto Raptors

1. The impact of Thybulle’s absences

The Sixers will be without their best perimeter defender for each away game in the series due to Canada’s restriction guidelines regarding COVID-19. Matisse Thybulle is not fully vaccinated, and thus is unable to travel to Toronto with his teammates. This means he will miss Games 3, 4 and 6 (if necessary). The obvious question here is how much of an impact will Thybulle’s absence have on the series?

We’ll find out the answer to that soon enough, but his absence certainly has the potential to be pretty impactful. The Raptors have several potent perimeter players, and the Sixers aren’t especially deep when it comes to reliable wing defenders behind Thybulle. Danny Green, Thybulle’s replacement in the starting lineup, is still solid defensively in spurts, but he can’t be looked at as a lock-down defender at this point in his career. Outside of Embiid, no one else on Philadelphia’s roster is known for their defensive prowess, so that has to be a concern for Philadelphia. The entire team will need to step up on that end in order to mask not having Thybulle.

Plus, having a player in and out of the lineup isn’t ideal for continuity, as we saw with Kyrie Irving in Brooklyn this season. Teams with championship aspirations typically try to build said continuity in the first round and having a key contributor only available part-time certainly doesn’t help that. The Sixers may be talented enough to overcome the situation, but it’s not something that a team wants to have to deal with at this point in the season.

2. Will the real James Harden please stand up?

James Harden appeared in 21 games for the Sixers during the regular season since he was acquired in February, and with such a small sample size it’s still somewhat tough to tell exactly how he fits with his new franchise, and alongside Embiid.

During those games, Harden averaged 10.5 assists — a number that is elite, and in line, with his production from the past several seasons. He consistently generated open opportunities for Embiid and the rest of the Sixers by simply occupying opposing defenses’ attention and then making the right pass at the right time. His playmaking has been a big boon for a Sixers team that was desperate for a perimeter creator.

But while Harden’s playmaking ability has been front and center in Philadelphia, his scoring has taken a backseat. He averaged just 21 points per performance with the Sixers during the regular season — his lowest average output in over a decade — and scored over 30 points just once. This is a dude who averaged 36 points a night just a couple of seasons ago. While the Sixers are certainly happy with Harden’s assist-ability, they also acquired him to be a reliable, secondary scorer alongside Embiid, and so far in that role, he has been inconsistent, to say the least.

More concerning than the raw numbers is how Harden has looked. He was never necessarily an athletic high-flyer, but he has looked sluggish at times with the Sixers, and he has had a noticeable lack of burst. He’s had a tough time blowing past defenders on the perimeter, and an even tougher go finishing over defenders around the rim. Without that burst as an offensive attacker that he displayed for a decade in Houston, Harden has been forced to rely heavily on 3-pointers and free throws for his point production. The problem with that is he’s not shooting especially well from long range with the Sixers either, as he converted just 32 percent of his 3s with the team during the regular season.

Some observers have claimed that he’s “washed,” while others suggest he’s still dealing with a lingering hamstring injury. Others say he was simply biding his time during the regular season in an attempt to enter postseason play as fresh as possible. So that begs the question: Which Harden are the Sixers going to get in the playoffs? Will it be the Harden from the regular season, or the Harden who established himself as one of the most lethal offensive players the league has ever seen over the past decade? Or maybe an in-between version? Whatever the answer is, it will go a long way toward determining how Philadelphia fares in this year’s playoffs.

3. Toronto’s approach to defending Embiid

The Raptors are a deep, talented team. But one thing they don’t have is a good individual matchup for Joel Embiid. Like most teams across the league’s landscape, Toronto doesn’t have any single player who is capable of matching Embiid’s combination of physicality and athleticism, and thus they are forced to guard the MVP candidate via scheme and committee.

What this means is that Toronto will throw a variety of defenders and coverages at Embiid. Sometimes it will be a hard double-team, sometimes it will be a softer double, while other times it may be a zone. This approach is designed to keep Embiid from getting too comfortable against any specific coverage — to keep him on his toes, as they say.

This is one area where we’ll get a good look at the chess match between Doc Rivers and Nick Nurse. It will be extremely interesting to see exactly how the Raptors opt to approach defending Embiid, and how Embiid — and the Sixers — react.

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