On Saturday, the Toronto Raptors fell 110-99 on the road to the Boston Celtics, which produced plenty of hope that the Celtics could still catch them for first in the Eastern Conference. On Wednesday, though, the Raptors reversed that result against the Celtics at home, beating Boston 96-78. And what particularly stood out as the difference between the two games was the Raptors’ defense and the Celtics’ shooting; on Saturday, Boston hit 45.5 percent of their shots from the field and 41.2 percent from deep, but on Wednesday, they made just 33.3 percent and 13.6 percent of those attempts respectively.
Meanwhile, the Raptors themselves actually were less efficient offensively in this win than they were in Saturday’s loss. In Boston, they made 46.3 percent of their shots from the field, but that fell to 43.5 percent at home Wednesday night. And it’s remarkable to have a notably-poor shooting night and still win by 18, something several Toronto players noted afterwards in comments to Ian Harrison of The Associated Press:
“We had to rely on our defense tonight,” DeRozan said. “We missed a lot of shots but, with that, we played extremely hard defensively and made up for the low percentage that we shot from the field.”
…“We didn’t score the way we needed to but we played defense the way we needed to,” Toronto’s Kyle Lowry said.
With both teams not hitting offensively, this one wasn’t the most picturesque game, something you can even surmise by what the Raptors’ team Twitter account chose to feature:
Offence at a premium. #RTZ pic.twitter.com/xMovrPHJ9u
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) April 5, 2018
Access: Denied 👎🏽 pic.twitter.com/pqPoVaqC3c
— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) April 5, 2018
Held 'em to 13 in the 2nd. #RTZ
Deebo – 8p
DWright – 6p, 6r, 4a pic.twitter.com/ykVUDocgbk— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) April 5, 2018
And many media members had much lower praise for this game:
I’d like to apologize for all those jokes I made about college teams being unable to hit jump shots after watching 27 minutes of Raptors-Celtics.
— Hardwood Paroxysm (@HPbasketball) April 5, 2018
https://twitter.com/PaoloUggetti/status/981699467953848322
Honestly, though, burn all copies of this game.
— Scott Stinson (@scott_stinson) April 5, 2018
The season is saved, in horribly ugly but professional fashion!
— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) April 5, 2018
As Arthur’s tweet suggests, though, this was an important result. The Eastern Conference-leading Raptors recently lost five games in an eight-game stretch, including Saturday’s effort against the Celtics and two losses to the Cleveland Cavaliers, and that combined with a six-game winning streak from Boston had the Celtics potentially back in the hunt for the first playoff seed. A win here would have put Boston within one game of Toronto and given them the season series and the tiebreaker, making that first-place seed very much in play in the final days of the season.
But with the Raptors’ win, they’re now 55-22 to Boston’s 53-25, and they’ve tied the season series and clinched the conference-record tiebreaker against the Celtics. All they need to clinch first place now is a single win of their own or a single Boston loss. And while this result doesn’t necessarily mean the Raptors are guaranteed to beat the Celtics in the playoffs (Boston was playing their second road game in two nights, and coming off a tough loss to the Milwaukee Bucks that ended their six-game winning streak, plus they’re still without Kyrie Irving), it’s certainly a good sign for a team that was struggling.
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