The Toronto Raptors are hosting the Boston Celtics on Tuesday. Short of visits from Cleveland and Golden State in January, it’s probably the biggest game on the Air Canada Centre schedule for the regular season. Heck, you could make a pretty good case that since Cleveland and Golden State were perceived as above Toronto at the time, this one matters even more – it’s two teams of roughly equal standing in the Eastern Conference table who both fancy themselves better than the other, neither of whom has proven what they feel they need to in the postseason yet.
Maybe that makes this less important to them – it’s not a playoff game, and nobody will crown one over the other or over Cleveland with a win here – but this also has more playoff implications. The Celtics are two games ahead of Toronto in the standings. Win here, and that gap is down to one and the season series is tied up with two games to go. Lose, and the gap’s three with a chance to only tie for the tiebreaker. It’s meaningful if the No. 1-seed is the goal.
“Tomorrow is one of them games you look forward to,” DeMar DeRozan said Monday. “It’s been a while since we played them, they’re the top team in our conference, you always want to battle with the best teams in your conference and in your league and tomorrow is an opportunity for us to face that and you look forward to it. I mean, we are the two best teams in our conference and every competitor wants to fight for that top spot. They’re in front of us, it’s one of them things that’s going to be a challenge and you look forward to them challenges and you get up for them types of games.”
It’s also just a great measuring stick for Toronto’s progress since earlier in the year, when they lost by a point in Boston to a Celtics team down Kyrie Irving. That game saw the Raptors fall into old habits late, and even if DeRozan missed a decent look late that would have shifted the narrative, the Raptors want to play differently against a defense like Boston’s. “Like Boston’s” meaning elite – No. 1 in the league – with multiple defenders to throw at DeRozan and an ability to slow down star wings without conceding a heavy volume of threes. It’s a really good test.
“I’m not saying we are where we want to be but we are further along, further along than we were at that point in the season,” Dwane Casey said. “We are further along in what we want to do, how we want to do it and having confidence in what we are doing. So I would say yes, we are.”
There’s also been some talk of this being a rivalry game of sorts. I don’t really buy it without any playoff meeting between the sides, even if they’re fairly evenly matched and competing for the same space in the NBA landscape. Maybe there’s a mutual dislike or competitive fire there, which is still a lot of fun even if it doesn’t necessarily qualify as a rivalry. There’s definitely a mutual respect.
“These guys are a special team,” Brad Stevens said at shootaround. “They’ve been building that for a long time and we’ve got a great deal of respect for them. The biggest thing is you’ve got to make it about who you’re playing against. Their starting lineup and their stars are well documented and their second unit may be the most fun to watch in the whole league. It’s pretty special to watch what they’re doing and we know we have to play well on both ends to have a chance to win.”
Now, if the Raptors win this one, the season series winds up 2-2, and the two teams meet in the Eastern Conference Finals and then again on Christmas Day next year? Now we’re cooking.
The game tips off at 7:30 on TSN 1/4 and Sportsnet 590. You can check out the full game preview here.
Raptors updates
Toronto enters with a full contingent of players here, save for the four names still with Raptors 905. That leaves them with 12, 11 of whom were in the rotation last game as Dwane Casey worked to get C.J. Miles’ legs back under him without removing Norman Powell from the proceedings entirely. It will be interesting to see how he handles the Celtics matchup here – Boston will dare non-star Raptors to beat them, but they’re also quite good at limiting 3-point attempts, particularly in the corners. Miles’ shooting would be appreciated; Powell might be a better fit against a defense that invites more attacking from the perimeter and has a number of talented wings for Powell to defend. The guess here is that both see time in an expanded rotation (Boston having a pretty large bench makes it seem unlikely Pascal Siakam is the odd-man out here, and Fred VanVleet is simply playing too well).
“This is one of the things I really respect about Toronto, up and down their roster they have a ton of young guys that are contributing at a high, high level,” Stevens said.
What’s notable here is not necessarily the bench but the starters for the Raptors. The previous meeting against Boston was the last game in which the team started Powell instead of OG Anunoby, and the turnaround is striking. (Lucas Nogueira was also ahead of Jakob Poeltl at that point, though the Raptors were running a 12-man rotation.)
More than any rotation tweaks, the Raptors feel like they’re in a better place in terms of executing the new offense now than they were three months back. They’re not shooting at an elite level, ranking 25th in 3-point percentage, but they feel they’re doing a better job of moving the ball and creating good looks, and eight players in the rotation are shooting 34 percent or better on threes on at least half an attempt per-game. This stands as a good test of that progress.
PG: Kyle Lowry, Delon Wright, Fred VanVleet
SG: DeMar DeRozan, Norman Powell
SF: OG Anunoby, C.J. Miles
PF: Serge Ibaka, Pascal Siakam
C: Jonas Valanciunas, Jakob Poeltl, Lucas Nogueira
OUT: None
TBD: None
905: Malcolm Miller, Bruno Caboclo, Lorenzo Brown, Alfonzo McKinnie
Celtics updates
Boston got some good news at shootaround, with Kyrie Irving declaring himself good to go after three games off to nurse a right quad contusion back to health. Marcus Morris also said he intends to try to play, though he sounds like more of a game-time call than a sure thing. Irving’s return will bump red-hot Terry Rozier back to the bench and likely excise ball-hawk Kadeem Allen from the rotation, while a Morris return would cut into minutes for Semi Ojeleye, Abdel Nader, and Guerschon Yabusele.
The Celtics have still not officially signed Greg Monroe, either, meaning that with Marcus Smart, Shane Larkin, and Gordon Hayward still down, they’ll be a little thin here, though not perilously so. Not dissimilar to the Raptors, Boston has gotten some nice production out of their young depth pieces, plus immense contributions from a pair of young starting wings in Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum. Their projected starting five has outscored opponents by 14.2 points per-100 possessions in 261 minutes together, rivaling Toronto’s starting five (plus-12.2 in 541 minutes) as one of the better high-usage fivesomes in the league. Smart’s absence takes away some of Boston’s more successful moderate-usage groups, but subbing Rozier in for either Aron Baynes or Irving has proven effective in small doses.
They have a lot of options here and figure to close with Horford at center and four guards/wings around him, which will either be a good test for Jonas Valanciunas or an opening for the Raptors to use Serge Ibaka at center, something they’ve done far less than expected (mostly for good reason).
“That’s just the beauty of basketball,” DeRozan said. “You go out there try to play chess, checker or Connect 4 or tic-tac-toe. You love them types of challenges of trying to figure it out while you’re out there. When it’s something you love to do, you get up for them challenges and you try to beat out your opponent.”
UPDATE: Stevens said pre-game that Morris is expected to play.
#NEBHInjuryReport: Kyrie Irving and Marcus Morris are expected to play tonight against Toronto, according to Brad Stevens.
— Boston Celtics (@celtics) February 6, 2018
PG: Kyrie Irving, Terry Rozier, Kadeem Allen
SG: Jaylen Brown
SF: Jayston Tatum, Marcus Morris, Abdel Nader
PF: Al Horford, Semi Ojeleye, Guerschon Yabusele
C: Aron Baynes, Daniel Theis
OUT: Marcus Smart, Shane Larkin, Gordon Hayward
TBD: MNone
Maine: Jabari Bird
Assorted
- Raptors 905 are on the road tonight and have Alfonzo McKinne, Bruno Caboclo, Malcolm Miller, and Lorenzo Brown all with them. That game overlaps with this one, so we may not have a recap for you until the morning.
- I dropped a 5,500-word mailbag today that should answer most pre-deadline questions people have. It better, because that thing almost killed me
- If you don’t want to go that deep, here’s a more high-level explainer at Raptors.com.
- Over at The Athletic, Eric Koreen and I went back and forth on tonight’s game and the trade deadline.
- On the heels of Woj speculating the Raptors could be quiet, Michael Grange of Sporsnet confirms that most of our analysis here lines up with the Raptors’ thinking at this moment:
More and more hearing Raptors will be sitting out or just a minor player/value hunter at trade deadline. No interest in Evans (no bird rights; ball-holder; no first-rounder to trade); see Hood as too pricy now and long-term. Slim pickings after that.
— Michael Grange (@michaelgrange) February 6, 2018
- This is a must watch, and it’s not available on iTunes and Google Play:
The Giants of Africa documentary is being released Tuesday. Really can’t recommend it strongly enough.
— Blake Murphy (@BlakeMurphyODC) February 4, 2018
The line
The Raptors are 5-point favorites with a 208 over-under. The line is a minor surprise – the Raptors get 3.5 or so for home court and the Celtics are shorthanded, but I expected Irving being cleared to have the line in the 3.5-4 range. The market’s warmer on the Raptors for this one than I expected.
