PHILADELPHIA–The Philadelphia 76ers enter the 2022 NBA Playoffs with high expectations led by an MVP candidate in Joel Embiid as well as the addition of future Hall of Famer, James Harden.
Embiid will be the focus of a lot of game plans as he led the league in scoring at 30.6 points per game and he averaged 29.0 points on 46.6% shooting in three games against Toronto during the regular season. The Raptors have a lot of length and a lot of 6-foot-9 guys so there will be a lot of different defenses they will throw at him.
“We don’t really have a guy to look him in the eye so it’s gonna be a lot of different guys trying to work, limit his touches, make everything he does as hard as we possibly can over the course of the game,” said Raptors coach Nick Nurse. “It’s like I said last time, we guarded him great last game, and he had 30. We did a lot of really good things, but he still had 30 so he’s that good.”
The Raptors did hold Embiid to 6-for-20 shooting in a March 20 win in Philadelphia so there is a lot that they can do to bother him despite not having the size that they did in 2019. In that series, the Raptors threw Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka at him and held him to 17.6 points and 37% shooting, and 4.0 turnovers per game.
“The big difference in the team for us is we had Gasol and Ibaka,” Nurse continued. “I would go into those games saying ‘It’s you two guys against him. You two guys in the 44 minutes he was gonna play, you two guys gotta expend your energy and play hard and play physical and come out and let the other guy do it and go back and forth.'”
Now, the Raptors will have to throw guys like Pascal Siakam, Scottie Barnes, OG Anunoby, and Thaddeus Young at him.
“Now, it’s about five of our guys that’ll probably end up guarding him and not the same size, not the same experience,” Nurse added. “Probably will have to use a lot more scheming as well with him, but we’ll see.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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