Because of ongoing border restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and mindful of public safety measures in Canada, the team has decided they will continue to play their home games in Tampa for the remainder of the 2020-21 season.
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— Toronto Raptors (@Raptors) February 11, 2021
NBA Celtics Raptors run out of gas versus rivals 10 things – Yahoo!
One — Perspective: Was it disappointing to lose out on a chance to reach .500? Yes. Do the Celtics have the Raptors number? For sure. But it’s silly to overreact to this result. This result was as much a reflection of circumstances as it was anything else. The Raptors were so clearly gassed as their legs completely gave out midway through the third quarter that even point-blank layups became impossible. Not only was this the second night of a back-to-back with the Raptors landing in Boston well after midnight, but it was also their fifth game in seven days, in five different cities. The Raptors will mercifully return to their temporarily permanent home in Tampa for two much needed off-days and will surely give a much better showing than they did tonight.
Raptors finding an identity away from Toronto home base – The Athletic
The Raptors’ execution against the Celtics was bad — Boston made 29 3-pointers to the Raptors’ nine and grabbed 14 offensive rebounds to the Raptors’ three. Too many of the Raptors’ key players got into foul trouble.
But they kept pressing until very nearly the end of the game, despite never getting the score within a possession. It wasn’t pretty, but a lesser team might have started thinking about its coming day off 45 minutes earlier than the Raptors did. At one point in the third quarter, the Raptors held the Celtics scoreless on 10 consecutive possessions. If the Raptors had scored more than six points during that five-minute stretch, they might have stolen the game.
They even lost in a way that felt similar to last season when they were back in Toronto, holding likely All-Stars Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum to 8-for-27 shooting, only to be done in by role players going wild from deep. Ultimately, two losses on a six-game trip, with both defeats coming at the end of back-to-back sets, is a decent outcome.
“I feel pretty good. Trending upwards. I think we’re playing really good basketball,” Nurse said. “I think we weathered some storms, came back. I think, again, we look like we’re getting in good shape, we’re finding a little better rhythm, we’re executing a little better, got a lot of room for improvement, got some time to get better.”
The Raptors are scheduled to have an actual day off at home in Tampa on Friday, a rarity. While many of the Raptors found temporary homes in Tampa during the preseason, Siakam said he only recently got one. He couldn’t quite decide on a reason for the delay, saying he is not that picky. He joked that the hotel staff was probably getting sick of him.
“For me personally, I finally got a house. So it feels kinda (like) home, going back to what I can call my bed, my space,” Siakam said. “I’ve been in a hotel for too long, way too long. I’m kind of excited to go back and be with my brother and a space I can call home, or whatever it is.”
Indeed, a few things are starting to inch toward recognizability.
Raptors fail to keep pace with Celtics’ three-point barrage – Sportsnet
Even if it seems like the Celtics might have Toronto’s number, the Raptors could be encouraged on the whole that they’re in a better place than they were when the two teams met in early January, their largely successful road trip proof of that.
“It was a solid trip but the two games we lost were on back-to-backs, so we’ve got to find ways to kind of figure that part out,” said Lowry. “I think we have an opportunity to continue to get better every night, I think this was a good trip for us, we played some tough teams, we found a little bit of a groove, Pascal really picked up his game, Norm played well, but we wish we’d gone 6-0. But we didn’t, unfortunately we lost two on the back-to-back games on the back end.”
The Raptors may have been showing some fatigue in the second half, particularly in different stretches when they couldn’t seem to convert a layup.
There was a wild sequence late in the third quarter when Toronto missed four layups in the space of a minute when the game looked like the two teams were running line drills. The Raptors were on a 6-0 run at the time and ended up holding Boston without a field goal for five minutes but ended up missing nine straight shots themselves and still trailed 88-80 at the end of the third quarter. They weren’t much better in the fourth quarter as they converted just 7-of-13 chances in paint and missed a number of shots at the rim.
“Well we’ve got to get better at finishing,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse. “We’ve got to have a mindset of how important it is. We’ve got to practice it. We’ve just got to be better … I think with the threes, when you’re shooting threes, you can just say ‘oh we didn’t make some tonight,’ that’ll happen, but when you’re at the rim you’ve got to will them in, determine them in. We’ll take a look at those.”
Of course making threes doesn’t hurt. The Raptors kept on grinding but couldn’t match the Celtics from deep and the math eventually proved overwhelming: three is greater than two.
Boston Celtics return home, handle Toronto Raptors, 120-106 – CelticsBlog
In the two teams’ previous meeting — a 126-114 Boston victory in early January— the Raptors won the first quarter, but subsequently suffered a brutal 38-14 shelling at the hands of the Celtics in the second. This time around, the Celtics didn’t have it quite so easy. With Boston’s threes continuing to fall, the Raptors countered by shooting even better inside the arc and continuing to find their way to the free throw line. Boston inched ahead, though, and entered the half with a 66-56 lead.
The story of the first half was not any of Boston’s or Toronto’s stars, but rather, the role player duo of Ojeleye and Payton Pritchard. The pair were engulfed in flames from behind the arc for much of the night, connecting on a combined nine of their first 13 three-point attempts (three-quarters of Boston’s total from deep). At the half, Ojeleye led all scorers with 19 points, while Pritchard came in third with 14.
Boston’s offensive rhythm carried over into the third quarter. The threes continued to fall from seemingly everywhere, with Kemba Walker (5-of-7 for the night), Ojeleye (6-8) and Pritchard (6-8) staying red hot. With so many other players finding buckets, Tatum took a back seat and enjoyed a more relaxed role as a creator rather than a primary scorer. He tallied up nine assists in 2.5 quarters, and the Celtics’ lead extended as high as 15.
The quarter ended sloppily, to say the least. As their shooters finally went cold, the Celtics went nearly five minutes without a made bucket, and the Raptors didn’t fare much better, missing a cavalcade of open attempts at the rim. The ugly pace favored Toronto, and the Raptors were able to recoup some of the deficit before Grant Williams finally found the Celtics a bucket with less than a minute to play. A last-second Celtics heave fell short, and they entered the final quarter leading by eight, 88-80.
Thankfully, the sloppy performance appeared to be just a blip, as the Celtics regained their composure when play resumed in the fourth quarter. A pair of threes from Pritchard and Javonte Green helped edge the lead back into double digits. The lead didn’t last long, however. Toronto’s aggressive attack in the paint (combined with some truly awful rim protection by the Celtics) kept them alive, and the Boston lead dwindled all the way down to five as the fourth quarter approached its midpoint.
Finally, as the clocked ticked down under the five minute mark, the Celtics managed to scrap together some important stops. Brown and Theis recorded crucial blocks on Toronto layup attempts, and Walker’s fifth triple of the evening once again put the Celtics ahead by 10. With that, the air appeared to be sucked out of Toronto’s sails. Boston sat their starters and Tacko Fall checked in as the clock ticked, and that was all she wrote.
Recap: Toronto Raptors fall to sharpshooting Boston Celtics on the road, 120-106 – Raptors HQ
Even with an improved offensive performance from Pascal Siakam, they couldn’t get it done. A man who often struggles when he sees green and white on the other side, Siakam had 23 points on 8-for-14 shooting, adding four rebounds and two assists to his efficient performance. He was confident too, a welcome sign after Pascal beat up on inferior opponents over the last week of play. Apparently, he can get it done against the defensive powerhouses too.
Norman Powell had 15 points in support, while Chris Boucher added 12 points off the bench.
Rebounding and threes just kept them out of the conversation, though — especially in the early going. Boston took a 12-2 lead out of the gate with Tristan Thompson punishing Aron Baynes’ attempts to get on the glass. While the Raptors would get out into transition later in the quarter to get their feet wet, these struggles to close possessions would hamper their ability to build momentum. Baynes looked out of his league most of the game tonight — continuing the storyline of whether the Raptors are bound to go small when Anunoby returns to the lineup on Sunday. Though his eight points and eight rebounds is a better contribution than usual, the move out of the starting lineup looks overdue for Baynes.
In the second, the Raptors really shot the ball well. The team kept firing them in at a 60% clip or better until well into the quarter, with Lowry starting 5-for-8 individually. The Ojeleye and Pritchard show balanced the scales, though, as the two would make 11 of their 12 threes in the first half alone — allowing the Celtics to carry a double digit lead into halftime.
The third is where the fatigue started to set in on both sides. While Boston’s offense started to look creaky without their surprise shooters, Toronto just couldn’t string possessions together — especially with their bench on the floor. The offensive contributions from Terence Davis (0 points) and DeAndre Bembry (4 points) were disappointing, but the lack of production from Fred VanVleet — who had just five points overall — may have been the biggest culprit. VanVleet has been asked a lot on this road trip, and while a 54-point game showed the upside of what he can do, there’s still some growing pains with his point guard play and ability to score against teams with large backcourts like Boston. The success may come yet, but this was definitely an off-night for Fred.
The Raptors just didn’t have the legs in the fourth to make an extended run, and that’s really where circumstance started to kick in. Maybe with a day or two of rest, they could roll a surprise lineup out there and will their way back into an ugly contest. There was just nobody left to do the job on Thursday. The team is exhausted, and they have every reason to be. (Aren’t we all exhausted these days?)
That day off hits now, as the team will enjoy Friday and Saturday to themselves before a date with the Timberwolves in Tampa. We wish everyone a restful couple nights of sleep.
Raptors look finished at end of road trip, fail to finish against Celtics | The Star
It wasn’t a matter of playing hard because the Raptors certainly did that. It’s just that they didn’t play effectively enough.
The loss ended a 4-2 road trip for Toronto, which can’t be considered bad given they didn’t have OG Anunoby for any of the six games and didn’t have Lowry for almost a complete one because of back spasms. They also played a couple of back-to-backs.
“I think this was a good trip for us, we played some tough teams, we found a little bit of a groove.” Lowry said. “Pascal really picked up his game, Norm played well, but we wish we’d gone 6-0.”
Lowry finished with 24 points Thursday and Siakam had 23 but the Raptors were ineffective from three-point range (9-for-28) and let a couple of relatively unknown Celtics go off.
Semi Ojeleye made a career-high six three-pointers and had a career-high 24 points and Payton Pritchard made six threes and scored 20 points. They made up for so-so nights from all-stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who combined for 29 points.
“I think we kind of collapsed the paint and we did a little bit of what we needed to do, but they kind of made the shots,” Lowry said. “They were getting looks that they wanted and they made them.”
The loss dropped the Raptors to 12-14 but they maintained a spot in the very muddled middle of the Eastern Conference.
Only five games separated third place from 13th going into Thursday. It seems no teams can gain any traction in what has become a very strange season.
“It’s flipped on its head a little bit, some of the teams that we’re probably used to being at the top didn’t get out to great starts (but) I think things are settling in a little bit,” Nurse said before the game.
‘COULDN’T MAKE A DAMN LAYUP’: Raptors run out of gas in Beantown | Toronto Sun
Normally coming into Boston you expect huge doses of Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown and while both were willing passers, neither came anywhere close to their season averages.
It really didn’t matter that much the way Ojeleye and Pritchard and Kemba Walker were bombing away from distance.
By game’s end both Ojeleye and Pritchard were 6-for-8 from beyond the arc and between the pair had accounted for the vast majority of the Celtics offence with a combined 45 points. Walker had the only other big scoring night on the Celtics with 21 points
Again, normally the Raptors would at least cut into that deficit with some three-point magic of their own, but there was none of that to be found on this night.
The Raptors as a team were 9-for-28 from three with Chris Boucher, Pascal Siakam and Paul Watson leading the way with two makes each. Lowry, Fred VanVleet and Norm Powell, who are usually pretty steady from inside or outside, managed just two triples between them on 12 attempts.
If you want to be generous, or even reasonable, you can chalk some of that up to fatigue.
While Siakam has in many ways just reverted to form, Powell is reaching new heights in consistency and production.
He had 20 or more points in eight of nine games before Thursday, all starts, while shooting 47.5 per cent from three-point range. He had a spate of turnovers in a five-game span (10) but had one a game for the four previous.
“I just like his decision-making right now the most,” Nurse said. “He turns the corner, he explodes to the rim. He looks really confident when it gets thrown out to him … when he rises up, you’re really expecting it to go in.”
Equally important is that Powell has been an attentive and effective defender lately. His mind had a tendency to wander at that end of the court, and he was not the most effective rebounder by any stretch of the imagination, but he seems to be a bit more focused.
“I think I noticed him making good rotations on D, blocking out a little better, all those things,” Nurse said. “But he’s certainly playing at a high, high level right now.”
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