Raptors drop trip opener in Philly, Nick Nurse hints at future

The Raptors have played more than a few bad quarters in the course of a season that’s been consistently inconsistent.

None have been worse than the second quarter in Philadelphia on Friday night.

Against the backdrop of coach Nick Nurse admitting he’ll take some time this summer to think about his future with the organization, the Raptors were annihilated by the Philadelphia 76ers in a truly gruesome 12 minutes of action.

The Sixers took 21 shots in the second quarter and made 18 of them, a truly stunning 85.7 per cent efficiency.

The Sixers scored 46 points, the most in a quarter by a Raptors opponent this season, and built a 77-57 halftime lead, another season high for a Toronto foe.

It was ugly and it was costly for the Raptors, who otherwise had some solid moments in what turned out to be a 117-110 loss that knocked Toronto back below .500 on the season. With a stretch of solid second-half play, they got within four points with less than four minutes remaining, but couldn’t complete the comeback.

Scottie Barnes had 29 points, nine rebounds and eight assists to lead the Raptors, while Joel Embiid had 25 and James Harden 23 for the Sixers.

All five Raptors starters scored in double figures, but the damage done in the horrid second quarter was just too much.

The game began a crucial five-game road trip for the Raptors, who will play twice in Charlotte and twice in Boston before returning home to finish the season a week from Sunday.

They are chasing Atlanta and Miami for the seventh, eighth and ninth spots in the Eastern Conference heading into the play-in tournament that leads into the playoffs.

Chicago beat Charlotte on Friday to get within a game of the Raptors in 10th, but Toronto holds the tiebreaker advantage over the Bulls.

And just to add another layer to the final week of the regular season, Nurse said before the game that his future with the team is far from certain.

“I’m going to take a few weeks to see where I’m at,” Nurse said, one day after the Star reported he’s being linked to a possible move to the Houston Rockets.

That aside — and Nurse made sure to emphasize that his focus is the playoff race (“my head space is to make this as long a season as possible”) — the Raptors showed flashes of the inconsistency that’s plagued them for most of the season.

As they’ve done in the past, they did find a way to limit the effectiveness of Philadelphia’s Embiid with a variety of defensive looks. The odd double team — forcing Embiid further away from the basket, where he’s less comfortable — and a swarming pack, when he put the ball on the floor, limited him to just nine second-half points and a 7-for-13 shooting night.

Embiid, the co-favourite along with Denver’s Nikola Jokic for most valuable player this season, came into the game as the NBA’s leading scorer, averaging 33.2 points per game. He’s expanded his offensive repertoire to become a more effective mid-range scorer.

“I think the confidence he has in his perimeter jumper, and even in his three-ball and stuff, makes it even more of a challenge because the post-ups — the early post-ups, the play call for post-ups — and then the rolling is also tough to deal with,” Nurse said leading into the game.

The switching defences surely weren’t a surprise to Embiid or the Sixers. It’s what the Raptors have done for years against him.

“We’ve thrown a lot of different things at him, and they’ve had a chance to look at them and adjust to ’em,” Nurse said. “So, obviously that makes it harder — familiarity. I think it’s always still a lot of the same, though, from our perspective. It’s a bunch of different matchups on him.”

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