Joel Embiid and the Sixers made Kawhi Leonard's Raptors look like the old Raptors

Joel Embiid flexed his muscle, his Philadelphia 76ers clamped down on defense, and the Toronto Raptors had few answers outside of Kawhi Leonard. The result was a 2-1 series lead for the Sixers with Game 4 back in raucous Wells Fargo Center on Sunday. What seemed impossible after the Raptors dominated Game 1 of this Eastern Conference semifinals is now another reminder of their playoff failures.

Embiid scored 33 points on 9-of-18 shooting, adding 10 rebounds, five blocks and three assists in just 28 minutes of a 116-95 victory against the Raptors. His trolling of Toronto increased with Philadelphia’s lead, which ballooned to as much as 26 points before Sixers coach Brett Brown rested his starters in the final five minutes.

Brown’s one-word answer to a question about a healthy Embiid being the best player in this series is frightening for a Raptors team heavily relying on Leonard:

Not even Raptors forward Pascal Siakam’s attempt to trip Embiid could stop him.

Leonard was phenomenal for the Raptors, scoring 33 points of his own, and Siakam was solid again, adding another 20, but fellow Raptors stars Kyle Lowry and Marc Gasol combined to shoot just 4 of 16 from the field, and the once vaunted Toronto bench totaled only six points on 11 shots before garbage time.

Philadelphia’s reserves were no great shakes, either, outside of another nice effort from James Ennis off the bench, but it didn’t matter, because the starting lineup was spectacular. All five starters reached double digits, led by Embiid and Jimmy Butler, who finished with 22 points, nine rebounds, nine assists and three steals.

The ball never stopped moving on offense, and the Sixers amassed 29 assists as a team for the third time this postseason. Twenty five of those came from the starters, who finished plus-12 in 15 minutes together in Game 3. That five-man unit is now plus-30 in 34 minutes for the series and plus 93 in 119 minutes in these playoffs.

Embiid, Butler, Ben Simmons, Tobias Harris and J.J. Redick have now outscored opponents by a wider margin than any other lineup in the entire playoffs. That distinction still belonged to Toronto’s starters entering this game. Leonard, Siakam, Lowry, Gasol and Danny Green owned Game 1 of this series, but the tide has turned, and Toronto is running out of time to avoid another disastrous playoff exit.

The Sixers dared Gasol and Lowry to beat them, and those two looked downright shook to shoot from distance, finishing 0 for 5 from 3-point range. Without having to worry about a pair of former All-Stars stretching the floor, the Sixers clogged the paint, and it took some serious shotmaking from Leonard to generate any scoring.

The elephant in Toronto’s room is getting harder to ignore. It is too early to write the Raptors off just yet, but they are treading dangerously close to facing serious questions about Leonard’s future. The lack of support for Leonard has been striking, and if this is their audition to show the superstar that they can erase past playoff failures and truly contend for a championship, it’s starting to look like a flop.

It did not help that, after Leonard scored 14 points on 6-of-6 shooting to carry Toronto within 89-81 at the end of the third quarter, Raptors coach Nick Nurse sat Leonard for the first 2:23 of the final frame. The Sixers doubled their lead in that span, all but putting the game to bed before Leonard even had his final say.

“We got outplayed in just about every area we could get outplayed, just in overall physicality, energy, cutting, rebounding, passing and all that kind of stuff. It’s been a while since we’ve seen this team play that way,” Nurse told reporters afterwards. “The first adjustment we’re going to have to make is we’re going to have to play a hell of a lot harder and we’re going to have to play a hell of a lot more physical.”

The Raptors need someone to step up next to Leonard and Siakam, especially if Embiid is going to play like this after being slowed by a knee injury and stomach ailment earlier in the series. And they’re going to need that someone to do so in front of a hostile Philadelphia crowd that reached deafening levels on Thursday.

Maybe Embiid’s antics — rocking an imaginary baby, soaring like an airplane, firing off some faux six shooters and laughing his way around the court — will inspire a response in Game 4. If not, the Raptors aren’t just in for a long series. They will dig themselves into a hole that will be filled with free agency questions at the bottom.

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Ben Rohrbach is a staff writer for Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach

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