TORONTO — Three years ago the Toronto Raptors and the Boston Celtics played a seven-game slugfest of a second-round series that ended with the Raptors losing, their reward finally getting to leave the bubble in Orlando, ending a spirited if ultimately star-crossed defence of their 2019 title.
In the seasons since, the Raptors’ fortunes have fluctuated wildly: from the ‘Tampa Tank’ in 2020-21 that was miserable in every way other than the opportunity to draft Scottie Barnes, or the second-half surge last year where the Raptors exceeded anyone’s reasonable expectations and won 48 games and made a not embarrassing first-round exit at the hands of the favoured Philadelphia 76ers.
This year?
We still don’t know. The Raptors have looked both lethal and hopeless in equal measure as they tumble along at .500 or so. It’s a season that is still taking shape, and a future that’s very much still being evaluated.
Which made Monday’s first visit by the Celtics especially interesting. Boston went on to their third Eastern Conference Finals in four years in 2020, took a step back the following year, and last year went to their first Finals since Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown and Marcus Smart became their identifiable core.
This season? They arrived in Toronto as unquestionably the best team in the NBA to this point, bolstered by some quality additions around the periphery and on pace to set a record for offensive efficiency, one year after they laid claim to a historic defensive performance in the second half of last season.
There are tests and exams during an NBA season. For the Raptors, desperate to gain some traction to this point in the schedule, the Celtics were the latter.
“For sure it’s a measurement game,” Raptors head coach Nick Nurse said before the ball went up. “I think we totally need to see where we are with these guys. They’re obviously the best team in the league right now, and record and metrics and numbers and historic this and historic that at both ends, and they’re playing really good. I think we need to see where we are at.”
Well, after a week in which the Raptors got thumped on the road by New Orleans and Brooklyn, and fell 116-110 at home to a shorthanded Celtics team playing for the second time in two nights, the answer might be: not particularly close to where they want to be, which is in the mix for the top teams in the East.
Boston improved to 20-5 and Toronto fell to 12-12 with the red-hot Los Angeles Lakers due in town on Wednesday. The Celtics got 31 points and 12 rebounds from Tatum and 22 points, eight rebounds and eight assists from Brown. Pascal Siakam led Toronto with 29 points, eight rebounds and seven assists while Barnes ended with 21 points, seven rebounds and four assists. The Celtics shot 13-of-36 from three while Toronto converted 10-of-28 chances, though Fred VanVleet was 1-of-6. Gary Trent Jr. scored 20 points off the bench and was 3-of-3 from deep. The Celtics made just enough plays to see them through.
With the Raptors on a 2-on-1, O.G Anunoby ended up bouncing the pass from Siakam off Smart’s leg. Boston took the turnover and pushed the ball to the frontcourt where Tatum rose up for a big three to put Boston up 12 again with 3:29 left. A three from Trent Jr. and a three-point play by Barnes gave the Raptors hope, but they couldn’t take advantage. Trent Jr. missed a lay-up, VanVleet missed a wide-open triple that would have cut the lead to three, Siakam missed a crucial free throw and Anunoby let a pass from Barnes slip through his hands and into the crowd with 50.9 seconds left, wasting another possession. It wasn’t the Raptors’ defence that hurt them against the Celtics juggernaut, it was their inability to make or finish plays at the other end.
“That was there to be had tonight,” said Nurse. “We didn’t make the plays, probably we made the ball bounce the wrong direction a couple of times on some of those little passes. Just unfortunate plays but that’s it.”
Overall the Raptors opted to look at the glass as half full. They don’t see themselves as a team that has lost three of their last four. They see a group that is close to breaking through.
“I think we’re getting better from that, and we just have to take the positive from it, and just keep working, keep working hard,” said Siakam of Toronto’s rough patch. “And I think that things are going to turn around for us and we’re gonna have one of those runs. [But] to do that we need to continue to focus on the details and continue to stay together, play as a team. And, yeah, I believe that we’re going to turn around and we’re going to have one of those stretches where we feel like we play our best basketball. It feels like it’s close … but we just got to keep going.”
For the Celtics of course, it was just another game, one they were playing on the second night of a back-to-back and without two starters (Al Horford, 36, who was resting and Robert Williams, who is injured and hasn’t played yet this season) and a key reserve (Malcolm Brodgon; illness) and against the backdrop of: The only thing that matters this season is to return to the Finals and win a championship.
“We look at [this] as the next game on the schedule,” said Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla. “I look at it as we have to get better from the things that we learned yesterday … I look at the challenge that Toronto presents in their physicality and their active hands and their ability to turn you over and their ability to be physical on the offensive end. So I think each game presents its own challenges.”
Not quite “one of 82,” but the Celtics have earned the right to not lose sight of the forest for the trees.
The Raptors’ first order of business was to somehow slow down a Celtics offence with a league-leading and potentially record-setting 120.7 points per 100 possessions and features a pair of All-NBA-level wings that can collapse defences like wet paper in Tatum and Brown surrounded by seven role players shooting 40 per cent from three or better.
“I thought we did OK as far as executing what we were trying to execute defensively for good chunks of the game,” said Nurse after the game. “They are not an easy team to guard, I think they have the No. 1 offence in the league, but I thought we were executing pretty well, fighting pretty hard out there, and playing pretty physical.”
Toronto led Boston 19-18 with 3:30 left in the first quarter as Boston started just 1-of-7 from three. The Raptors threw themselves into shot contests and made the Celtics work for what they got. The Celtics got three quick triples from Grant Williams, Tatum and Sam Hauser to open up a nine-point gap before Trent Jr. and Thad Young responded with threes of their own to keep in touch as Boston led 27-25 after the first quarter.
The Raptors kept at it. They were aggressive on the Celtics stars: Tatum was harassed into three first-half turnovers and Brown will see Anunoby in his dreams — Tatum told the Raptors forward he’d see him in Utah at the all-star game in February — but Toronto didn’t lose everyone else in the shuffle of traps and doubles. Offensively Toronto was relying on Siakam to help in the halfcourt and scored 16 fastbreak points, several breakouts coming off Celtics turnovers. The Raptors were up nine with 2:53 left in the first half before Boston pushed back with a driving dunk by veteran Blake Griffin, who spun a flailing Barnes around with a pump fake and drew a foul, followed by a Tatum triple to cut the Raptors lead to 62-56 at half.
But in the third quarter the Celtics stepped on the gas and in particular, Tatum — who came into the game averaging 30.7 points, 8.1 rebounds and 4.3 assists while putting himself in the heart of the MVP discussion — broke out for 17 points on 6-of-9 shooting in the period. He was helped by Smart, the hard-nosed point guard, who knocked in a pair of threes on his way to eight points and four assists in the quarter. Each was prominent in a 23-7 run that turned an eight-point Raptors lead into an eight-point deficit midway through third before Boston took a 91-80 lead into the fourth.
The Raptors couldn’t reel them in from there, with each team playing largely to form to this point of the season. For the Celtics that meant finding a way to win another game in what is shaping up to be a charmed season and for the Raptors, it was a loss that didn’t have to be.
