On Saturday afternoon at 6pm on RDS and Sportish, the Toronto Raptors will return to the playoffs after a short season away.

They will face the Philadelphia 76ers and will be overlooked to win the duel in the eyes of bookmakers and the majority of the news. And yet, yours really belongs to a growing minority who believe that the Nick Nurse troupe is more than likely to blur the waters in the next two weeks. Leave these few lines and ten minutes of your time to explain why.

When the 2021-22 season kicked off on October 20 in Toronto, expectations were quite low in Queen City. Toronto fans were simply relieved to see their protagonists back on Canadian soil after a grueling season in exile south of the border. When you looked at the team that was set up on paper, it was difficult to aim high in the rankings without revealing your party side. There were too many questions:

-Was Pascal Shiakam going to regain half of his previous self-confidence?

-Was Fred VanVleet really ready to be the leader of a winning club?

Could the Dragic / Achiuwa duo contribute enough to ease the grief of Kyle Lowry’s departure?

-How many years until we see Scottie Barnes’ potential come to fruition?

-How many weeks before you experience a severe lack of depth in the guard position?

And so on…

But none of this was too serious. The Raptors had a good youth core to build on for years to come. Longing for some apparent regularity.

Then, the first three months of the season confirmed the original case. The general possibilities were there, but we had to be patient. The best moments (victories against the Sixers, Grizzlies, Bucks x 3, Warriors) were mostly canceled out by sometimes heartbreaking defeats in second division clubs. Then we noticed a vague and unbalanced club. The ‘We the North’ movement thus presented a record of 23 victories and 23 defeats on the morning of January 29 and no one really complained about it.

Then came what was to happen in another bizarre season influenced by Covid, vaccines and health restrictions: the Raptors began to win. Often. The click has just been activated in South Beach this warm winter Saturday night in late January. There was a triple triumph in overtime over the mighty Miami Heat. Nick Nurse showed off his colors using his starters for more than 54 minutes each. And they responded with inspiring performances imbued with lust and resilience. The Toronto staff had just put all their chips in the center of the table. The series or nothing in 2022.

You can imagine the sequel. (I was not going to set up this dramatic story just to destroy it two lines later.) They started an inspiring / amazing 25-game winning streak in 35 games. All 12 of themand the ranking in the East will eventually become the 5thand square. The main causes:

– Pascal Shiakam returned to the star that was in 2019

-Despite the physical slowdown ahead, VanVleet had found his comfort zone as a leader

-Gary Trent Jr. was now a constant perimeter threat

– Precious Achiuwa, against all odds, starts to shoot from the center of the city with rather shocking regularity

-Chris Boucher has decided to gain the trust of Nick Nurse more than ever

-Scotie Barnes showed us where the future of the delegation would undoubtedly go

I could talk about the glow and emergence of this charismatic Scott for hours, but I will keep my excitement for a future column. So I will stick to this: the selection of the first round (4and ranking) of the last draft, whose selection had surprised and disappointed many fans at first, now passes for a genius by Masai Ujiri and Bobby Webster. It grows much faster than we thought, especially in attack. He can play and defend all positions. His teammates love him. And his desire to win is obvious. It’s proof that in a league like the NBA, a good draft can quickly change the course of an organization.

All of this brings us back to the present and to this upcoming duel between Toronto and Philadelphia. On paper, the work seems heavy. The two biggest names in the series play for the Sixers and one of them, a Cameroonian giant named Joel Embiid, has never been more dominant. He averages 30 points and 12 rebounds per game. He can do everything on the field. Good luck to stop him.

That said, there are several reasons to be optimistic as a Toronto fan:

-James Harden, since his arrival from Brooklyn, is rather disappointing. He is less explosive than expected and struggles to overtake his opponents to reach the ring like the good old days. Its perimeter performance leaves something to be desired. And his pedigree in the playoffs in crucial games leaves him even more unpredictable. The passionate but irreconcilable audience of Philadelphia could eat him whole if he does not play well in the first round.

-All the pressure will be on the Sixers. You’re not going to get Harden at a high price in the middle of the season just to lose to the young Raptors in the first round. It would be unthinkable. Toronto is a year, maybe two, ahead of its reconstruction plan. They are not supposed to be fifth in the East. They have nothing to lose.

– Philly support staff does not inspire confidence. Tyrese Maxey is having a great season, but the same can not be said for Tobias Harris. Mathysse Thybulle is a defensive monster on the wings, but he will not break anything offensively. Not to mention that he is not vaccinated, so he is not suitable for meetings in Canada. The best days of Danny Green and DeAndre Jordan are behind them. And the club’s best sniper, Seth Curry, sacrificed himself to get James Byrd. Not ideal.

-As for the battle of the coaches, Doc Rivers has more experience, but Nick Ners is just a better and more advanced general than the good old Doc in the 2022 reality show.

-The Raptors have won three of their four games with the 76ers this season. Not to mention their dramatic clash in the 2019 playoffs that Kawhi finished in the most memorable way. The moral: Toronto’s representatives do not seem to be intimidated by the Embiid gang.

If I put myself in the place of Nick Nurse on the tactical side for a few moments, I tell myself that he should accept some production from Mr. Embiid. An average of 30 points and 10 rebounds allowed per game would be relatively reasonable. With that said, Nurse is likely to devise an exhausting defensive game plan to annoy, tire and slow him down by bringing in two attacking long-handed attackers in almost every possession. The Raptors will thus challenge Harden and the Sixers’ support staff to defeat them by raising their level of play by at least one point.

In short, the table is set and I expect a great natural order. The Raptors’ coach told the media this week that he was expecting a real “slug party”, which could loosely translate as a “heavyweight bout”. I agree with him and look forward to starting!