CAMDEN, N.J. — Heading into their first-round series with the Toronto Raptors, many questions pop up for the Philadelphia 76ers. They will have to find ways to get Joel Embiid going against an aggressive Raptors defense, and they must be better in transition and on the glass.
The transition defense and rebounding hurt them in the regular season: The Raptors took three of the four matchups with the Sixers. In Toronto’s win in Philadelphia on March 20, the Raptors pulled down 20 offensive rebounds. That cannot happen if the Sixers are to win this series.
“Defensively, we got to rebound,” said coach Doc Rivers. “That’s what they do well. That’s our weakness. We got to get back. That’s what they do well. That’s our weakness. So those are the two things I think defensively we cannot allow transition buckets. We can’t allow second shots.”
Still, Rivers is not worried about their regular season struggles with Toronto.
“I don’t ever get caught into individual records during the regular season,” he explained. “I never have. So many things are at play. You can be on a five-game road trip. You can be back-to-back, a guy could just be coming off of injury, it’s just so many different reasons why some of those things happen.”
The fact the Sixers lost three of the matchups can almost be a positive. There are lessons Philadelphia can learn from those games rather than had they won those matchups.
“I feel like there’s more to learn from losses than there are in wins sometimes,” said Matisse Thybulle. “So the fact that they have beat us three times, I think, in some cases plays to our advantage because it’s hard to win over and over again. Teams are usually nervous when you go into a series having swept them in the regular series because of the understanding of what the other team gains and it also just the hunger that comes from losing to a team multiple times.”
As the series begins on Saturday, the Sixers are still feeling confident about what they can do in this series.
“You mean besides Joel Embiid and James Harden, Tobias Harris, Tyrese Maxey?” Thybulle asked. “I think we’re confident in ourselves just in the nature of being who we are. It’s not a measure of what we’ve done in practice that’s different than what we’ve done this year. We know who we are.”
This post originally appeared on Sixers Wire! Follow us on Facebook!
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