{"id":2148,"date":"2026-04-13T03:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-13T03:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/2148\/"},"modified":"2026-04-13T03:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-13T03:52:16","slug":"toronto-raptors-clinch-playoff-spot-and-heres-who-theyre-playing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/2148\/","title":{"rendered":"Toronto Raptors clinch playoff spot and here&#8217;s who they&#8217;re playing"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Toronto Raptors are heading back to the NBA Playoffs for the first time in four years.<\/p>\n<p>Scottie Barnes recorded a\u00a0triple-double to help the\u00a0Raptors defeat\u00a0the Brooklyn Nets 136-101 Sunday at Scotiabank Arena, in the final game of the regular season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt feels good,&#8221; Barnes said in the post-game interview. &#8220;To know we did it, we can have our minds stop thinking about it a little bit. It\u2019s kind of hard to sleep. But it\u2019s a big relief.&#8221; \u00a0<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I\u00a0can&#8217;t wait to see the energy that this building is going to bring. It&#8217;s going to be amazing.&#8221;\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Toronto secured the fifth seed in the Eastern Conference, setting up a first-round meeting against the Cleveland Cavaliers,\u00a0a team they have beaten in all three meetings this season.<\/p>\n<p>The Raptors held the sixth seed entering Sunday, but moved up a spot after the\u00a0Atlanta Hawks and Orlando Magic each lost their respective games.<\/p>\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/dailyhive.com\/toronto\/raptors-76ers-playoff-run-over#google_vignette\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">last time the Raptors made the playoffs<\/a> was in the 2021-22 season, where\u00a0they lost in the first round to the Philadelphia 76ers in six games.<\/p>\n<p>Barnes is the only player from the 2022 playoff team who&#8217;s still on the Raptors roster.<\/p>\n<p>The Raptors will play the first two games of the best-of-seven\u00a0series on the road in Cleveland\u00a0(likely starting on April 18 or 19), before coming back to play two games at Scotiabank Arena.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Toronto Raptors are heading back to the NBA Playoffs for the first time in four years. Scottie&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2149,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[1395,1394,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-2148","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-toronto","8":"tag-playoffs","9":"tag-raptors","10":"tag-toronto"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2148"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2148\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2149"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2148"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2148"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/canada\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2148"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}