The Philadelphia 76ers welcomed back their entire team on Wednesday when they took on the Toronto Raptors and there was a clear pep in their step. This was more of a warmup game for the playoffs as the Sixers already know their seed and their playoff opponent. All in all, this result was a 125-121 loss to the Raptors as the bench could not hold all the way on and Stanley Johnson scored late.
Tobias Harris led Philadelphia in this one finishing with 22 points on 8-for-13 shooting, six rebounds, and five assists and the bench unit led by Furkan Korkmaz had 21 with five rebounds, and Raul Neto finished with 17 points finished it off. Al Horford was solid in his limited minutes and Joel Embiid had double team issues before leaving with a hand injury.
With that said, here are the three observations from this contest:
Harris’ aggressiveness
As mentioned before, this was more of a warmup game for the Sixers to get ready for the playoffs. For Philadelphia to have a serious chance at success in the postseason, they will need Harris to be the one to accept more responsibility on offense and they will need a night such as this one out of him consistently. He was aggressive attacking the rim and there was a different mentality that he had on offense. He had a couple of nice post-ups as well using his size and strength to get the job done.
Horford making a difference
The Sixers will need Horford in the worst way when the playoffs roll around and Wednesday night was a good test for him on the team. His defense on Raptors star Pascal Siakam was very good as he frustrated him pretty much every time he was matched up with him using his veteran instincts to stay with the young and talented forward.
Offensively, there was not much more that coach Brett Brown could ask for. Philadelphia needs him to shoot more threes and become much more aggressive on offense and he obliged in this one. One can’t help but feel better about the Horford situation after this game. He finished with nine points, five assists, and four rebounds while knocking down two shots from deep.
Embiid’s double team issues
The Raptors are always a team that has success against Embiid due to the savviness of Marc Gasol and the aggressive defense that the team plays on a regular basis. They sent waves of double teams towards the big fella and he did not respond very well as he did not make the quick decisions that he was making in earlier games in the bubble. He had five turnovers on the night before leaving at halftime due to the hand injury. He and Horford led a lot of the bench reactions when the second unit was playing well. [lawrence-related id=36751,36747,36742]