TORONTO — A half hour after it ended, the gravity of the opportunity they squandered became clear. Joel Embiid trudged into a makeshift conference room at Scotiabank Arena with a black athletic wrap on his hand and a blank expression on his face. He spoke in a tone that we have heard before: distant, downtrodden, tinged with a hint of spite.
"In basketball," he said, "you need to use your hand a lot."
With that, a 110-102 loss to the Raptors began to feel a whole lot bigger than the series line score suggested. Game 4 closeout opportunities are rarely must-wins. At the same time, must-wins are rarely easily identifiable in the moment. The Sixers will have three more opportunities to polish off the Raptors, but they may not get another to earn a regroup that they desperately need. Saturday was it. And they looked wholly uninterested in taking advantage.
