As the Raptors’ deficit grew bigger and playoff elimination creeped closer, the enemy from Philadelphia picked out a face in the Toronto crowd and delivered a message.
This was a couple of weeks back at Scotiabank Arena, where Nav Bhatia, the city’s basketball superfan, was sitting in his usual seat along the Bay Street baseline for Game 6 of the Raptors-Sixers series. At the moment in question Joel Embiid, the Sixers centre who’d been booed almost every time he touched the ball during the series, seemed in the mood to return some of the animus.
“I think we were down 15 points.