The Philadelphia 76ers ran hard over disorganized Toronto with a huge third quarter on Thursday, on their way to a 132-97 victory that ended both the Raptors’ season and high hopes of becoming the first team in its history. NBA that will win a series after the end. 3-0. Chris Boucher had 25 points and 10 rebounds as a brilliant light on an otherwise awful night and Pascal Siakam added 24 points for the Raptors, who lost the top seven starting round 4-2. “Listen, they are definitely disappointed, with very heavy air [the locker room]”, Said coach Nick Nurse. “They are disappointed. My message was that, as a whole, I thought we spent a huge amount this year with a lot of things and we just kept fighting and we kept playing and we kept getting better and we kept counting things. And it was never really smooth, right. “There was always a big bang on the road.”
Gary Trent Jr. finished with 19 points, while rookie Scotty Barnes had 18 points for the Raptors, who played without all-star guard Fred VanVlitt. Joel Embiid, the seven-foot center-back Raptors who love to hate, had 33 points and 10 rebounds for the Sixers, who won the series 4-2. They will face the Miami Heat in the second round. “We were not going back to Philly for Game 7,” said James Harden, who had 22 points and 15 assists. WATCH l The Raptors meet the end of the playoff series in the defeat of the 6th game by the 76ers:

The 76ers eliminate the Raptors in 6 games as Embiid, Harden lead

Philadelphia beats Toronto 132-97 and takes the first round 4-2. Joel Embiid scores with 33 points, while James Harden adds 22 points and 15 assists. 0:48
The Raptors looked very cooked up after losing the first three games of the series, but won consecutive elimination games, fueling fans’ hopes of a historic comeback victory. Having a dominant victory with 103-88 on Monday, the Raptors kept the seven points for the first half despite the horrible shots. But they never seemed to be in sync on either side of the floor all night, and the Sixers opened the game 30-9 in the third quarter. “Listen, congratulations to them, first of all. I thought they were definitely great in three of these games in this series, they were really great,” Nurse told Philly. “They shot it, they had a great time in three of the games and tonight was one of them. “Obviously, no guard in the second half, we can not stop them.”
The Sixers scored six three-pointers in the third quarter, to the chagrin of the 19,800 Scotiabank Arena crowd, and a long-distance Harden bomb put Fili 22 points behind with 3:52 left in the box. The visitors beat Toronto 37-17 in the tenth minute and led 99-78 to start the fourth. A Barnes jumper less than a minute into the quarter reduced the lead to 18, but Embiid almost single-handedly extinguished any hope of an incredible comeback, scoring 10 points in less than four minutes. And when Tobias Harris threw a dunk with 4:34 to play, the basket put Philly by 27 points. “You just have to be really resilient in the process. You saw that tonight,” Harris said. “A complete effort almost the whole game of how we wanted to play and just kept it.” Embiid celebrated Harris’s dunk running on the pitch with his arms outstretched like a plane – reminiscent of the 2019 Eastern Conference semifinals against Toronto. It rained in the center of the seven feet. Harris’s three-pointer with 3:38 to play saw the Sixers go up by 32 points and sent many fans heading for the exits. Raptors gathered in Jurassic Park, the fan zone outside the Scotiabank Arena, to react to Toronto’s expulsion from the NBA playoffs on Thursday. (Evan Mitsui / CBC)
Shiakam fouled out of the game with 2:14 to play and received standing ovations as he left the game. The Scotiabank Arena crowd shouted “Let’s Go Raptors!” as the Nurse fell from his marks at that point. The Raptors shot just 7-to-35 – 20 percent – from three-pointers and 39.3 percent from the field. Philly shot 40 percent from long distance and 58 percent from the field. Nurse praised Boucher, who had 11 of his points in the second half. “When he gives this relentless energy like that, he can make a lot of good things happen,” Nurs said. “He cuts, he flies and he rebounds, I think he had six offensive rebounds on his own in the first half. He had a block shot on all three, he just used his presents and he did. “So at least we had a huge night off him from the bench. I didn’t get much more from the bench tonight.” Many Toronto athletes were on hand to watch the defeat, including Maple Leafs Auston Matthews, Morgan Rielly, Mitch Marner, Alexander Kerfoot and Wayne Simmonds, Ayo Akinola and Ifunanyachi Achara of Toronto FC and former Raptor Cory Joseph.

The Raps are missing from the injured VanVleet

The Raptors lost a lot to the steady hand of the three-pointer specialist VanVleet, who made his second consecutive game with a stretched left hip flexor. The Raptors fought long distances in all series. Nick Ners kept saying they had to play a great three-point shooting game. “They will start coming in, I keep saying that,” Ners said after Wednesday’s training session. “The next game will be as good as any for them to start going.” It was not to be done. The Raptors’ defeat ended a season that began with low expectations, saw them play for several weeks in Toronto in an almost empty arena due to COVID-19 restrictions, but picked up momentum after the All-Star break when the Raptors won 14 from the final 18 matches. With their win at Philly on Monday, the Raptors became the 14th team – and first since Milwaukee in 2015 – to play their sixth game after a 3-0 win. The Bucks lost 4-2 to Chicago. In the 75-year history of the league, 146 teams have faced 3-0 deficits in a series of seven games.
The Raptors were trying to become the fourth NBA team to play a 7th game after 3-0. The Raptors scored seven of their first eight shots and then spent more than five minutes without a goal from the field, losing 10 consecutive shots. Harden, who had just 15 points in Game 5, had 10 in the quarter and the Sixers were seven points ahead a few times. Philly was 34-29 to start the second. A Bauser three-pointer underlined the series 15-5 to start the second that saw the Raptors go up five. Green had four three-pointers and 12 points in the fourth, as the Sixers resisted and led 62-61 at halftime. The Raptors shot just 3-for-15 from a long distance in the first half. The Sixers did not have Matisse Thybulle, who is not eligible to travel to Toronto because he has not been fully vaccinated for COVID-19.