Maybe it was nothing — just a desperate stab at respectability en route to the inevitable gentleman’s sweep.
The Raptors, after all, needed some unlikely heroics to win Game 4 of their first-round playoff series at Scotiabank Arena on Saturday afternoon, avoiding the humiliation of a four-zip exit at the well-taped right hand of Joel Embiid and the Philadelphia 76ers. On a day the Raptors lost Fred VanVleet to a grim-looking third-quarter hip injury, they needed Pascal Siakam, who’d been dismal in Game 3, to bounce back with the highest scoring playoff game of his career: 34 points of fearless aggression, better late than never.