Raptors’ VanVleet hits other targets when shots don’t fall

PHILADELPHIA—He knows, because Fred VanVleet is an aware young man. He heard the moans and felt the angst, and of course it killed him to miss a shot after an open shot after an even more open shot through the early stages of the Raptors-Sixers series.

It killed him to see his minutes cut back as Toronto coach Nick Nurse realized that the relatively tiny backcourt of Van Vleet and Kyle Lowry — as tough and gritty and smart as it is — wasn’t working in the face of VanVleet’s slump and the Sixers’ size.