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Nurse: East's top seed doesn't 'have much relevance' to Raptors

Rick Madonik / Toronto Star / Getty

The Toronto Raptors enter Sunday three games back of the Milwaukee Bucks for the East's top seed.

With nine regular-season games remaining, head coach Nick Nurse isn't losing sleep over where his club finishes in the standings.

"It just doesn't seem to have much relevance to our team, and the situation that our organization is in," Nurse said, according to ESPN's Tim Bontemps. "Yeah, we want a decent seed, but we can't get caught up in it."

The Raptors finished with a franchise-record 59 wins in 2018 en route to being the East's first-seeded team. However, LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers swept Toronto in the second round.

Nurse has spent the season using different lineups, hoping to find the right formula to reverse the Raptors' postseason misfortunes. Injuries to key players necessitated some of the shuffling, but Nurse insists it was his plan all along.

"I think we went into training camp with the theme of, 'We're gonna move some pieces around, we're gonna try a lot of schemes,' all with the end goal in mind," Nurse said.

The Raptors have never advanced to the NBA Finals during their 24-year history. They reached the Eastern Conference finals during the 2015-16 season.

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