Nurse Discusses Raptors' Challenge of Guarding Embiid Before Game 1

On Saturday night, the Philadelphia 76ers and the Toronto Raptors will tip off Game 1 of their first-round series. Saturday’s game marks the first time the Sixers and the Raptors will face each other in the postseason since their second-round series in the 2019 NBA Playoffs.

At the time, both rosters looked quite different. For Toronto, they were headlined by stars Kawhi Leonard and Kyle Lowry. Meanwhile, the Sixers had a big three containing Joel Embiid, Ben Simmons, and Jimmy Butler. At this point, just one of the five stars mentioned are on the same roster since that 2019 season.

Sixers center Joel Embiid has seen a lot of growth since his team dropped that 2019 series against the Raptors. Not only does he enter the 2022 postseason healthier than ever, but he admitted that his first-round opponent has helped him become a much better player maker.

As Raptors head coach Nick Nurse prepared for the matchup earlier this week, he highlighted specific areas of Embiid’s game that he’s seen an improvement in.

“I think he's done a great job of a number of things: getting position, getting the ball, staying faced up more, he's shooting ultra-confident in every shot he takes, whether it's a post up or it's an elbow, or it's a one-legged fade away, or it's a three-point or a step-back three, whatever, he's ultra-confident in shooting them,” said Nurse on Wednesday. “So that's probably the biggest thing. There's a wide array of faced-up plays that he'll make that make it hard to stop because he can shoot over the top of you.”

After getting a few days off from games, Nurse discussed the challenges of having his bigs guard Embiid in the first-round series on Saturday night.

“We’re going to have a lot of schemes and a lot of plans, and a lot of people are going to cover him,” said Nurse. “I think that’s where we always start. We’ll start going down through the schemes as we can. Sometimes some will work, and some won’t. Some will have a little bit longer life, and some won’t have any life. Sometimes just changing for the sake of change, but there’s gonna be a lot of guys that see time guarding him. We don’t really have a guy to look him in the eye.”

Back in 2019, the Raptors had two reliable veteran bigs, Marc Gasol and Serge Ibaka, to throw at Embiid. Nowadays, Nurse admits that “about five” Raptors will garner the responsibility of guarding Embiid, which isn’t something the Sixers’ big man will be surprised about.

“The way that they defend me has never changed,” Embiid said earlier this week. “They just play recklessly, sending three guys on me as soon as the ball is in the air.” While Embiid knows it won’t be easy to counter Toronto’s defensive attack, the Sixers star has recently proven that he can answer the challenge.

“There’s going to be a lot of different guys trying to limit his touches and make everything he does as hard as we possibly can over the course of the game,” Nurse concluded. “Like I said, we guarded him great last game, and he had 30, right? I mean, we really, really did a lot of good things, and he still got 30, so he’s that good.”

Embiid and the Sixers are set to tip-off against the Raptors at 6 PM on Saturday.

Justin Grasso covers the Philadelphia 76ers for Sports Illustrated. You can follow him for live updates on Twitter: @JGrasso_.