https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAayxt7m5Ww
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYG0tA7h4pE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNfcnPSGoXM
10 things: Celtics demolish Raptors in Game 1 – Yahoo!
Two — Lifeless: The Raptors just can’t score on the Celtics. It’s been the running theme through their four losses against Boston. The Celtics do a great job of switching on the perimeter to deny the Raptors any opportunities to get into the paint, which cuts off the oxygen for the rest of their team. Toronto’s halfcourt offense is average to begin with, but where they do succeed is getting their guards with a head of steam towards the rim, collapsing the paint, then kicking it out for three. There was none of that tonight. The scant bits of offense the Raptors got were mostly in isolation, and with all due respect to the defending champions, they don’t have anyone who can score efficiently by themselves.
Raptors can’t lose centre battle against Celtics as badly as in Game 1 – The Athletic
Ironically, the Raptors looked at their best Sunday when Gasol and Ibaka played together. Those larger lineups were able to eat up a lot of space with a zone defence, one that Boston will probably figure out with more repetitions against it. Playing that big also threatens a transition attack that was already struggling to get much going against the Celtics’ excellent transition defence efforts.
There are a few options available to Nick Nurse as he tries to figure out how to tilt the centre battle back in Toronto’s favour, where it needs to be for the Raptors to wrestle back control of the series. A swap of units for Gasol and Ibaka doesn’t solve much, as Ibaka’s offence is so necessary for bench units and Gasol’s defence is usually sharper. A tweak could see Gasol on Marcus Smart instead of Theis, allowing Pascal Siakam or OG Anunoby to guard Theis and switch any pick-and-rolls, similar to how Toronto defended Bam Adebayo and the Miami Heat. Smart had a great shooting performance in Game 1 and can put the ball on the floor to show off his floater package, but the more offence that goes his way from Walker, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, the better for Toronto.
Finding some minutes for Chris Boucher as a sort of counter-chaos option to Williams is possible, especially if the Raptors want to use him at power forward some or the dual-big lineup opens some backup centre minutes. The best option might be to play more minutes small, with Siakam and Anunoby as the frontcourt. Boston doesn’t have any problem playing against those smaller groups, but it could be a way for the Raptors to oil their creaky offence with a bit more speed and an extra attacker on the floor in Norman Powell or Terence Davis II. That look got only 34 seconds of action in Game 1, and though the Raptors’ primary preference will be to get their centres going more holistically, that option’s there if things aren’t working again Tuesday.
That there are several ways to tweak the centre usage and rotations is at least somewhat encouraging. The game being as out of hand as it was might have limited some of what Nurse was willing to show as an in-game adjustment, and the Raptors have tended to do well with between-game adjustments over the course of playoff series. Whether it’s using Gasol more as a screener and facilitator or shifting him off Walker’s actions on defence, or whether it’s getting Ibaka more of his minutes opposite Theis or leveraging him more in pick-and-roll against Williams, or whether it’s downsizing altogether, the Raptors need to make sure the advantage at the centre spot belongs to them in Game 2. They just don’t have enough of an edge at the perimeter positions to lose at a perceived position of strength, too.
The Celtics are too good for the Raptors to withstand Pascal Siakam’s struggles – The Athletic
“I think they’re really a gap team,” Siakam said, pointing out how active the Celtics are in reaching in on drives, just as the Raptors are. “They’re really in the gaps and stuff. We had a lot of open shots that we didn’t make. I expect us to make those next games. Maybe that’s gonna open up a little more of the floor for us.”
“I think we’ll always look at trying to get him involved in about all areas: as a post-up player, as a jump shooter, as a handler in the screen-and-roll, as a setter in a screen-and-roll,” Nurse said. “I think we’ve got to mix it up and vary it, even (give him) some isolations on top, isos on the side, hopefully get him involved in the transition game a little bit as well.”
Siakam is right in pointing out that the team’s shooting did not help him out. Even taking out his 0-for-3, the Raptors shot 7 for 37 from deep. Plenty of those looks were clean. The Raptors have to be better.
At the same time, just as those shots might loosen things up for Siakam, Siakam producing could loosen things up for the Raptors shooters. You would expect to see him involved in much more pick-and-roll actions in Tuesday’s Game 2.
Once Kawhi Leonard left, the Raptors made peace with the fact they will not have the best player in the series very often. Lowry can give him a run, but Jayson Tatum gets that honour in this best-of-seven. Saying that, the Raptors’ hopes this year rely on Siakam putting himself into that conversation. He does not have to outplay Tatum, but he has to at least display the wisdom he picked up from a gantlet of nightmare matchups in last year’s postseason.
The good news: Sunday’s game was the last one of August for the Raptors. Siakam’s bad month is over. If he and the Raptors cannot figure out a way to get him going, however, the Raptors’ September might be a short one.
Raptor Recalibration, Game 1: Going zone, Celtics backup C minutes and more – The Athletic
Brad Stevens: Misdirection?
Prior to the game, Celtics head coach Brad Stevens was asked about how well the Raptors rotate defensively and how you respond to that.
“Isolation is not the answer,” he said.
This was at least a little surprising to hear. The Celtics are a very good isolation team, and one theory on how to counter the Raptors’ elite help-and-recover ability is that isolations with shooting around them to prevent help could work. The Celtics don’t have elite shooting — the Raptors helped freely off the corners all game and would probably double-down on that variance-inviting strategy if given the chance again — but they have enough, and they have at least two very good isolation players in Jayson Tatum and Kemba Walker. Isolations also tend to be a lower-turnover play type for teams when they aren’t playing the Raptors, so it doubles as a potential counter to Toronto’s elite transition attack.
Well, as it turns out, the Celtics isolated plenty. Per Synergy, they finished 12 possessions via isolation, well above their 7.7 season average and more than double what the Raptors, the league’s No. 2 isolation defence, face in an average game.
The results were mixed. Boston scored 11 points and drew one foul on those possessions, only turning the ball over once. What’s more, they rarely seemed like the design at the start of the possession. Instead, the Celtics used their ability to isolate as a helpful last-resort if the Raptors’ defence held up against their actions earlier in the possession. To wit, Tatum and Walker only combined for five of those isolations, with the rest coming from guards being asked to create later in the clock (or Semi Ojeleye in garbage time as a reward for his good game). For the most part, the Raptors will live with the diet of shots Boston got out of isolations and the situations in which they took them.
How Brad Stevens blew away Nick Nurse in a Game 1 clash of innovative coaches – The Athletic
Even against Toronto’s defense, perfect execution only gets you a barely open 3.
But the Celtics kept executing throughout the night, and the shooting luck swung tremendously in their favor. Nurse played the numbers, knowing that Smart ranked fourth in the NBA in pull-up effective field goal percentage (eFG%) — tied with J.J. Redick — and eighth-last in catch-and-shoot eFG% this season, per NBA Stats. He was willing to recover late over to Smart knowing he is the one bad spot-up shooter on the floor among Boston’s perimeter players most of the time. But Smart was in a perfect rhythm, going 5-for-7 from the corners.
“The last series for me wasn’t my best shooting performance of the playoffs,” Smart said. “Things changed with different game plans, I got a great look off that first one and I just felt good the rest of the night.”
As the Raptors continued to blitz Walker over his screens, Theis kept setting them way out near the sideline. While it put a lot of pressure on Walker to beat the coverage, the Celtics kept finding ways to draw that pinch and hit what was still often a contested 3. It wasn’t perfect by any means, as the Raptors hit one more 3 than Boston (eight to seven), but it took them 10 more attempts. The difference came in the corners, where the Celtics shot 10-for-15 while the Raptors went just 2-for-6. When the offense continued to apply pressure down the seams, the Raptors mixed up the defenders they would send to pinch at the top of the arc, whether it be from the elbow or even from underneath the play. No matter if it was the Celtics starters or the second unit with Robert Williams on the roll, Boston kept finding gaps and opening up the elbows and corners. Whenever Toronto got too aggressive loading up, Boston would make it pay.
The Celtics had a disconcerting 23 turnovers in this game, but the Raptors only scored seven fast-break points. Since Toronto creating transition points off turnovers was such a big storyline coming into the series, Stevens was asked about this stat. He said he didn’t know why it was so anomalous, but suspected it was misleading. The twist is that it’s not the lack of fast-break points that was misleading, as Stevens suspected, but rather the fact that only 10 of Boston’s turnovers were in live action and Toronto only scored off of four of them. Of those live-ball turnovers, four of them were Celtics unforced errors, the result of trying to get too cute on the move. Toronto did a solid job with ball pressure, but a lot of these turnovers were just travels or push-offs by Theis and Wanamaker, careless passes and fumbled catches. Toronto’s pressure was felt on most of these, but there was a lot of sloppiness Boston will need to tighten up.
While Toronto’s defense was exposed in the most valuable area of the floor that isn’t under the rim, Boston’s defense forced all the drive-and-kick 3s to come up above the break, and the Celtics got pretty lucky on a lot of wide-open misses. While some might point out that 3-point defense is a noisy stat that includes a lot of luck, Boston is toward the top of the rankings every year because it covers the corners and forces more difficult attempts from inferior shooters. That success is no fluke, but some of that shooting luck should still swing back Toronto’s way at some point in this series.
This was the second time the Celtics have ever seen an opponent miss 40 3-pointers in a playoff game, per SportRadar. It’s hard to imagine the Raptors doing that again. But Boston also missed a ton of their open looks taking advantage of the Raptors’ pinch. It’s hard to imagine the Celtics doing that again.
So they stayed, and got shellacked by Boston in Game 1. The bubble came very close to disintegrating this week because as the world burned outside, basketball just didn’t feel important anymore. Maybe that’s why the Raptors were so disjointed.
Or maybe it was the whistle early, when fouls were being given out like free masks at a supermarket. Or maybe it was missing some shots early on, layups, easy ones. Or maybe it was that the Celtics are long, fearless, and pretty good. Boston’s length made Fred VanVleet look small for the first time since facing Philly in the playoffs last year, and Pascal Siakam still hasn’t found his touch on floaters or threes, or even come close.
And at times Toronto’s defence was a step slow, two steps slow. Maybe it was the Celtics, and the world, and everything that made the Raptors look like just any other team Sunday.
“It’s hard to say,” said Raptors coach Nick Nurse. “I think if you are looking for excuses, or reasons — maybe excuses is too hard — you can sit there and say it’s understandable, and maybe it is. But what do you do? We got this moment where we have to play, and we can use our thoughts and energy towards a lot of positive good away from the games, and there’s a lot of time to do that.
“But when it comes time to play we have to somehow focus in and play. (The Celtics) went through the same stuff and it didn’t seem to bother them. Right?”
Right. Think about this: The Raptors are the defending champions, and have played with unbreakable professionalism and effort and pride all season. If the Blake shooting and the mad confinement of the bubble and the accumulated weight of systemic racism unmoored them enough to consider walking away, think about how powerfully they feel it, and why.
Celtics tame toothless Raptors in 112-94 victory – CelticsBlog
It was arguably the Celtics best quarter since the playoffs began.
The Celtics started this game with an insane pace to their play. Hitting the throttle on every possession on both ends of the floor. Surprisingly, Marcus Smart opened the scoring, hitting a corner three after struggling to get his shot to fall against the 76ers.
Toronto caught two early fouls when trying to cut-off Jaylen Brown out on the corner three areas. The Georgia native had been electric from deep throughout the Celtics’ last series, something the Raptors seemed keen to avoid. Unfortunately, Brown was hitting his shots in this quarter, even drawing a four-point-play with around four minutes left.
Serge Ibaka gave the Raptors a scoring punch from the bench, hitting two big threes after checking in. Stevens countered Ibaka with Robert Williams following his excellent showing against Toronto during their seeding game.
The biggest takeaway from the quarter was the Celtics defense, forcing multiple turnovers from a team that usually knows how to take care of their possessions.
When the Celtics defense is firing the way it was in this quarter, it can be incredibly frustrating for their opponents. Those frustrations boiled over early, as Raptors coach Nick Nurse received a technical midway through the quarter.
Boston Celtics gain series lead after Game 1 win against Toronto – Hardwood Houdini
For the defending champs, their top three players struggled to shoot the ball. Pascal Siakam, Fred VanVleet, and Kyle Lowry shot a combined 13/44 from the field and 3/19 from distance. If Toronto wants any chance in this series, they’re going to have to find their stroke from outside, as they rely heavily on the 3-point shot.
Overall, the Raptors had an abysmal shooting day. Sure, they’re most likely going to hit more shots in Game 2 – but Boston contested practically every jumper they took. The effort level was there on defense, and that’s how you win this type of series.
It’s going to be a grind, and the Boston Celtics are off to a good start.
Toronto Raptors: VanVleet,Siakam struggle as Raptors fail to solve Celtics – Sir Charles in Charge
On the surface, both Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam will have to be better for the Raptors on the offensive end. The two finished with a combined 24 points on 8-32 (25%) shooting from the field. To put that total in context, during the first round of the playoffs, VanVleet and Siakam were the team’s two leading-scorers, totaling 42 points per contest in their four-game sweep of the Brooklyn Nets.
If VanVleet and Siakam are not going to lead the Raptors on the offensive end like they’ve done pretty much all season long, Toronto might as well pack their bags already.
Defensively, Toronto also needs to do a better job in defending the 3-point line. In Game 1, Toronto let Boston have any corner 3 they wanted, and the Celtics made them pay by canning 10 of them. You may not expect Boston to hit nearly every corner 3 attempted, but giving up 30 points from just the corners is never a great sign.
Perhaps Game 1 was an anomaly. Maybe Toronto’s offense resurrects in Game 2 and this series is back to one game apiece. However, at this point, that’s not a foregone conclusion. The Toronto Raptors have lost four of the five matchups against the Boston Celtics this season.
Game 1 might’ve been the beginning of the end for Toronto’s magical run this season. It might be time to panic for the Raptors.
NBA Playoffs 2020 Raptors HQ Podcast: Post-Game 1 Raps-Celtics Reaction – Raptors HQ
Toronto came out missing and Boston came out making shots to the tune of a 32-13 lead. A fairly even back-and-forth ensued for the remainder of the game. How’s that for a synopsis? Obviously, a lot of analysis is required after another wire-to-wire blowout loss to the Celtics.
In the latest episode of That’s A Rap, the boys break down Toronto’s latest Game 1 loss, but also discuss the various issues plaguing the NBA and the world at large.
Raptors’ potent transition offence neutralized by Celtics in Game 1 – Sportsnet.ca
The Celtics did a great job of neutralizing this aspect of the Raptors’ offence and it looked to seep into all other aspects of their offence, as the Raptors only shot 36.9 per cent from the field and 25 per cent from three-point range for the game.
In particular, Toronto’s two leading scorers from the first round of the playoffs – Fred VanVleet and Pascal Siakam – looked off on Sunday. They combined to shoot just 8-of-32 from the field for only 24 points.
The job the Celtics did to limit the Raptors in transition was particularly problematic for Siakam. Fast-break buckets are part of his bread-and-butter repertoire, as the Toronto all-star led the team in fast-break points and points off turnovers this season.
It was only one game and, as mentioned previously, the Raptors did manage to force turnovers, so Siakam isn’t too concerned because it all comes down to execution, ultimately.
“I think early they made a lot of shots, so there wasn’t really a lot of transition opportunities,” Siakam said of Boston’s ability to stop Toronto’s transition game. “But, obviously, once the game was going we got a lot of stops and I just don’t think we converted on the other side. So I think we’ve just got to do a better job once we get the stop and steals and stuff like that and convert them into points.”
It’s a point well made by Siakam but, as the clip below shows, against a team as long, athletic and defensively responsible as the Celtics, the execution aspect of it all may be the toughest part of the equation.
Lewenberg: Toronto Raptors come out flat in Game 1 after emotional week off the court – TSN.ca
The Raptors were unrecognizable, on both ends of the floor. They didn’t move the ball and they definitely didn’t shoot well enough, hitting just 10 of their 40 three-point tries. They weren’t able to generate transition opportunities – their biggest strength offensively – and, apart from brief stretches to open the second quarter and close the third, their defence wasn’t as locked in or tied together as usual.
This didn’t look anything like the team that finished their remarkable regular season with the league’s second-best record, and they certainly didn’t look like the team that demolished Brooklyn in that convincing first-round series sweep a (long) week ago.
It’s impossible to say whether that was product of the long layoff between games, or the emotional toll that this past week has taken on the players. Maybe they just had an off day, or perhaps this really is a bad matchup – they’ve now dropped four of their five meetings with Boston this season, including their only two losses in the bubble.
There are plenty of potential factors to explain what we saw from Toronto in Game 1 and, realistically, they may have all played a part in it, to some degree. Regardless of what the team and its players are going through right now, though, there was no sugar coating it after the loss: the Raptors were thoroughly outplayed.
“Today we just didn’t play well,” said Kyle Lowry, who played on a sprained left ankle and was one of Toronto’s lone bright spots, recording 17 points, six rebounds and eight assists in defeat. “I don’t know, I just think we didn’t play well enough to win the basketball game, no excuses made. We gotta play hard, we gotta go out there and do our jobs harder, do our coverages harder and execute better. Yeah, it was emotional, but we came out here to play basketball, there’s no excuses to be made, the Boston Celtics beat us tonight.”
“I mean, both teams [were] in the same situation,” said Serge Ibaka. “We are not the only team that was in that situation, they were in that situation too and they played better than us today, so I don’t think that was the reason or excuse. We have to give them a lot of credit, they played better than us and we have to learn from it, be better the next game.”
There are surely adjustments to be made going into Tuesday’s Game 2, and they’ll likely start with finding more opportunities to free up Pascal Siakam and Fred VanVleet, who the Celtics bottled up and held to a combined 24 points on 8-for-32 shooting.
Are the Celtics just a bad matchup for the Raptors? – Video – TSN
The Toronto Raptors have been stellar in the NBA bubble, but the two poor performances they have had since the restart have both been against Boston. What about the Celtics makes them a problem for Toronto? Should there be real concern with such a small sample size of games? Josh Lewenberg shares his thoughts.
The Raptors had a brutal, lacklustre game from the opening tip in a 112-94 loss to Boston in Game 1 of their second-round playoff series.
Toronto shot poorly, didn’t defend very well, and gave the Celtics too many open three-pointers. The better team won the game.
Whether that happens another three times in this best-of-seven series is indeed a mystery but if Toronto plays that poorly and Boston plays that well, this series is going to be over in a hurry.
“Obviously, we are not ourselves and I think more we are going to have to play a lot better, especially at the offensive end,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said. “I just thought we really weren’t very good there, didn’t make many shots, we didn’t play with great composure down there. Probably didn’t execute very well.
“But it was a rough one out there today on a lot of fronts. I think the actual Xs and Os and the tactical part of it — obviously we will need to do better — but it was not a very good rhythm out there today for us.”
Perhaps it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he was able to play up a position or two and check Siakam. With Gordon Hayward injured Smart has become a starting forward, with Brown and Tatum often getting primary defensive matchups against smaller Raptors.
More surprising, though, was Smart’s breakout offensive performance. He immediately put his stamp on the game by outscoring Toronto’s starters 10-7 in the first quarter. Smart made sure he landed the first punch. Then he had a big third quarter as well to help keep the Raptors on their heels. In all, Smart nailed five three-pointers and scored 21 points in all, the second-highest scoring playoff game of his career and only the third time he’s cracked 20 in the post-season.
Smart said after a tough shooting opening round his first attempt felt good and he stayed hot from there.
He had shot 2-for-15 on three-pointers in the first round and just 8-for-36 in the bubble in Orlando since the NBA’s restart overall. Smart is a career 32% three-point shooter and Boston has a lot of weapons. Tatum, the best player in this series, looked awful in the first quarter and eased his way into the game before standing out in the second half. Smart’s first and third quarter surges helped allow Tatum to do that without Boston paying for it at all.
“Marcus today was unbelievable on both ends,” said Celtics coach Brad Stevens.
Stevens had guessed correctly before the game that allowing Tatum, Brown or Walker to show off their offensive prowess as individuals was not going to work. Any of them can break opponents down and get off their own shot at a high level, but Toronto happens to have a few answers for 1-on-1 scorers that most teams don’t.
“Isolation is not the answer,” Stevens had said sagely.
“They just load up on you, so the ball has to pop, you have to move, you have to find a great shot when you can and you have to be patient enough to find it”
Helped in part by early foul trouble by some key Raptors defenders, the Celtics moved the ball around nicely, generating all kinds of open looks for themselves.
As they have figured things out before, as Nurse was saying even before the game began.
“It’s enabled us to do a lot of stuff,” he said of the team’s collective intelligence. “I was kind of amazed that they were able to pull off from one timeout to the next, absolutely, switching coverages because the other team would flip sides of the floor, whatever, and we’d be able to flip our coverage immediately and they’d execute it right out of the deal, or whatever.
“So, yeah, there’s a lot of stuff these guys are capable of handling.”
Specifically, it will be getting Fred VanVleet unbottled, He went 3-for-16, including 2-for-11 from three-point range.
“(The Celtics) played really good defence and they were active and they had us out of rhythm,” Nurse said. “I’m not so sure there weren’t pretty good opportunities there that we just need to score on, as well.”
The defensive adjustment is just as simple. The Celtics made 17 three-pointers and 10 were from the corner, more a few of them thanks to Raptors mental lapses.
“There was a couple where guys were bottled up and we just ran to double-team for some reason, and left the corner three guy out there,” the coach said. ”So I got to take a look at those, because there was a couple of really blatant ones that were just breakdowns.”
But finding ways to tweak schemes and play harder and play smarter has been something the Raptors have done all season and it’s not a stretch to think they won’t do it again.
Raptors just not themselves in Game 1 blowout by the Celtics | Toronto Sun
Both teams came into this one focussed on making a defensive statement. The Celtics did never really allowing the Raptors offence to get going. Toronto’s defence had some moments, particularly in the second quarter when Nurse went to a zone with his jumbo lineup on the floor. It slowed the Celtics down rather effectively, but it didn’t matter a whole lot when they failed to make any headway at the other end.
Early on, the Raptors missed in close. For almost the entire game, they missed from distance.
Credit the Celtics defence without question, but a lot of those threes were open and good looks that just didn’t fall.And the at-the-rim opportunities the Raptors missed, too many of them by Pascal Siakam, were soul- crushing for a team that just isn’t used to that lack of success.
“We lose some energy defensively and some thought process when the ball continues to roll off the rim and go out,” Nurse said. “That’s part of it, too.”
Boston’s starting five was a combined 14-for-31 from deep. The Raptors’ starting five combined managed four successful three-pointers on 25 shots including an uncharacteristic 2-for-11 from behind the arc for Fred VanVleet, who was clearly the focus of Boston’s defensive effort.
From the start the Celtics set the tone, outscoring Toronto 39-23 in the first quarter and never trailed the entire game.
The Celtics probably would have run away with this one earlier than they did had it not been for Serge Ibaka coming off the bench and giving the Raptors some life with some early, and much-needed scoring.
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