Gameday: Celtics @ Raptors, January 15

The Toronto Raptors are welcoming the defending champion Boston Celtics to town as they look to collect their second win in a row. Toronto ended their five-game skid against the Golden State Warriors in their previous game on the back of some great performances from Scottie Barnes and Chris Boucher. Toronto will look to upset Boston in a somewhat similar fashion and they will definitely need standout performances from a multitude of players to do so.

The largest conversation around the Boston Celtics team ethos is their emphasis on shooting three pointers. Boston attempts 49.4 threes per game which is the most in the league by a comfortable margin. They have many elite drivers such as Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown that consistently touch the paint forcing defenders to pinch in and help and opening up the tertiary players for triples. Boston has a 5-out offense, which means that while one player has the ball the other 4 players are spaced outside the three point line, which spreads out the defense. Not only do they have great shooters at every position, each one of these players can attack closeouts off the dribble, such as Jrue Holiday and to a higher degree, Derrick White.

Toronto will be without starting point guard Immanuel Quickley tonight, who has been up and down since his return but his presence and threat of shooting did make life easier for Toronto at times. In order to hang around Boston, Toronto has to have an efficient offense. It can not have the prolonged dry spells that frequently plague this team, Barnes has to be a decisive and efficient scorer in the mid range, RJ Barrett has to be a strong and tough driver to force help and open things up for his teammates. Boucher and Jamal Shead have been giving Toronto strong contributions off the bench, Boucher especially with his blazing three point shooting as of late combined with his usual brand of high effort glass crashing. A Gradey Dick hot shooting game would work wonders tonight as well, as he has been somewhat quiet for a couple of weeks now, at least juxtaposed with his early season scoring explosion.

Going up against the Boston Celtics is no easy task, but the number one thing you have to stop when it pertains to them is the dribble penetration from one of their stars. If you can keep Tatum or Brown in front or at least force them to take tough mid range shots, then they won’t be able to open up as many guys for threes and their offense will look different. They’re going to get up a lot of threes no matter what but impacting the quality of these shots is key.