Raptors back in play-in position as Celtics coast to season-series sweep

BOSTON — For a team chasing an NBA championship, getting Jayson Tatum back at full strength is a big deal. 

The Boston Celtics haven’t needed their five-time All-NBA wing to give the Toronto Raptors the business, mind you. Boston was 3-0 before Sunday afternoon’s game at TD Garden, with none of the results ever really in doubt. 

But Tatum’s return to All-NBA form after missing the first 62 games of the season recovering from a torn Achilles tendon suffered last May could very well be the finishing piece Boston needs to return to championship form.

It’s not even clear they needed him against Toronto on Sunday, as the Celtics dusted the Raptors in the fourth quarter to coast home with the 115-101 win. 

Tatum was merely a ‘nice-to-have’ when the best big man on the court was the Celtics’ Neemias Queta. A Portuguese centre who was a former second-round pick and spent three seasons on two-way deals before signing a team-friendly three-year deal for $7.2 million. He scored 18 points on 10 shots, mostly on a mixture of putbacks (thanks to five offensive rebounds) and unimpeded rolls to the rim. These things happen, but considering that Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković eventually had to adjust his rotation so that he could match up rookie Collin Murray-Boyles with Queta instead of Jakob Poeltl — who signed a three-year, $84 million extension last summer — you can kind of glean that the Raptors have bigger problems than how to match up with Tatum and Jaylen Brown. But that didn’t go all that well either. Throw in Payton Pritchard, back in his super-sixth man role with Tatum healthy again, and the trio combined for 66 points on 53 per cent shooting, with Tatum adding 13 rebounds and seven assists. 

The Raptors’ core three players? They weren’t nearly as good. Scottie Barnes, Brandon Ingram and RJ Barrett combined to shoot 16-of-43 from the floor (37 per cent) while committing nine turnovers. Once again, the difference in the game was the fourth quarter — a theme all season. The Raptors were trailing by three going into the third, coughed up a couple of live-ball turnovers, lost track of Pritchard for a three and a lay-up, and the lead was back up to 12 in the blink of an eye. The Raptors had cut the lead to seven with 4:53 left on a pair of buckets by Brandon Ingram, but a Queta putback dunk, a Pritchard steal and a Derrick White three sparked a 15-4 run that sealed it for Boston. 

“I think we needed to come out with more urgency,” said Ja’Kobe Walter, who, together with Collin Murray-Boyles, were the Raptors’ bright spots. Walter finished with 16 points, was 4-of-5 from three and had two steals; one each on Tatum and Brown, who combined for 10 of Boston’s 18 turnovers. “They went on a quick run in that fourth; we just didn’t stop the bleeding. We have to figure out a way to punch back. Our identity is defence and we can’t have that many slip-ups early in that quarter.”

Murray-Boyles finished with 12 points on 5-of-8 shooting. He added five assists, finding his teammates on cuts with some sharp passes out of the high post. It’s his fourth consecutive game in double figures scoring, a stretch in which he’s averaged 16.5 points per game on 65 per cent shooting.

The loss dropped the Raptors into seventh place in the East. They have the same 43-35 record as the sixth-place Philadelphia 76ers, but Philadelphia owns the tiebreaker because it has a better divisional record.  

That two of the Raptors’ best performers Sunday — and really of late — are Walter and Murray-Boyles might be the most encouraging thing about the Raptors as they unconvincingly plod their way to the post-season. 

Murray-Boyles, in particular, is a key figure for the Raptors now and in the future. If he can become a two-way difference maker, he represents Toronto’s quickest path to meaningful improvement this year and next. 

And consider the circumstances: 

Murray-Boyles isn’t coming back from the kind of injury Tatum has admirably and remarkably fought his way back from, but his rookie season has been a battle. 

He’s been dealing with two separate injuries to different parts of his left thumb — one when he caught his hand in the jersey of a Miami Heat player on Dec. 23 and the other when Lakers star Luka Doncic took a massive chop on his left hand on Jan. 18. 

The rookie tried to play through them, but would inevitably take some kind of blow on his thumb during the course of play and end up in obvious pain. The sight of Murray-Boyles waving his hand around like he’d caught his finger in a car door was a common sight. 

It got to the point where Murray-Boyles needed some extended time off, the most telling sign being that he wasn’t looking to score. In a 10-game stretch after Doncic’s karate chop, Murray-Boyles was averaging just 4.9 shots in 23 minutes per game and just two offensive rebounds. In the 11 games before Doncic hit him (and Murray-Boyles sat out four games), the Raptors rookie was putting up 8.1 shots per game and grabbing 3.9 offensive rebounds. 

He’s at least back to that level, if not better. And by the way, his thumb isn’t back to normal. 

“Not even close,” he said to me before the Celtics game. But it’s not bothering him enough that it’s affecting his offence. And he hasn’t looked like he’s caught in a door lately, so that’s encouraging too.

“I’m just really trying to do as much as I can, whenever I catch it, to be more aggressive because I know that helps the team,” said Murray-Boyles. “I know that helps get teammates open even if I’m not going to score. Just being aggressive makes teams respect me more.”

He showed it when he turned the corner in a pick-and-roll with Jamal Shead and rocked the backboard early in the second quarter. Or when he stood up Brown in the halfcourt and scored on a dunk in transition. 

There was a moment in the second quarter against Memphis on Friday when the Raptors had fallen behind — which felt a little bit concerning given the Raptors were coming off a disappointing loss to Sacramento, another tanking team, in their previous start — when Brandon Ingram was waiting to check into the game with Murray-Boyles. The 10-year veteran looked at the rookie and bumped fists and trusted the rookie with a simple message.

“He just told me play as hard as I can and let’s blow this game out of the water,” said Murray-Boyles.

On his first touch, he finished another pick-and-roll with a dunk. His athletic burst stands out on a Raptors team that can be lacking in that area. 

He’s got plenty of room for improvement: his perimeter shooting is a work in progress, and even around the rim, he’s very left-hand dominant, which the league will catch up to sooner than later, especially if the Raptors do end up in a playoff series. For now, it’s not something he’s worried about. 

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. I’ll just be aggressive. That’s all that really matters. I’m strong and I’ll just use my size to my advantage.”

His teammates are picking up on his confidence.

“He’s moving the needle for us,” Ingram, who finished with 15 points on 6-of-13 shooting against Boston, said. “Defensively and offensively.  That’s very rare for a rookie. A lot of rookies, they want to show their stuff, but he’s found his niche, he slides in the right spot, he’s available at the right time and he sees the game.”

Whether the Raptors make the playoffs or survive the play-in is an open question. It’s hard to be optimistic after matchups against teams like Boston, who have won four games against the Raptors by an average of 12 points. The Raptors are now just 5-17 against the top eight teams in the NBA. 

But a performance like Walter had against Boston or the way Murray-Boyles has played of late, there’s at least room for optimism. 

Hey, wait … that’s Aaliyah Edwards: You never know who you will run into. I was taking the elevator up to floor level at TD North Garden, and there was Edwards, the Canadian women’s national team star and Connecticut Sun forward. She was in Boston as part of an all-female broadcast on NBC Sports Boston, doing pre-and-post-game analysis. “It’s something I’ve been interested in,” said Edwards, who is poised to start her third WNBA season and second with the Sun. “I majored in communications at UConn, so it’s definitely something I want to do in the future. Obviously, my priority is basketball in my season and my passion, but off-season, this is my chance to explore and tap into different things that I like.” 

Slowly for Quickley: “I missed basketball.” That’s how Immanuel Quickley described how he was feeling as he sat in the Raptors locker room before the Celtics game, his troublesome right foot encased in a bucket of ice. He’s at least able to see some basketball in his future. He’s out of the light walking boot he was wearing to protect the case of plantar fasciitis that popped up recently and has kept him out of the lineup for eight games and counting. The Raptors’ point guard has gone through on-court workouts for three straight days now, without a setback. The official word is he’s ‘ramping up’ his basketball activity, with no return date set. 

And now there are four: Back when the Raptors had 10 games left on their schedule, I broke them down this way: They had three games against elite teams they have struggled to compete with all season; three games against the ‘tanking class’ the Raptors have mostly done well against, and four against the middle class — their peer group, basically. I suggested that if the Raptors could finish 6-4, with three wins against the tankers and three-out-four against the middle class (presuming they go 0-3 against the elite), it would be enough to finish with 46 wins and grab sixth place.

So far? They went winless against Detroit and Boston but went 2-0 against New Orleans and Orlando. They dropped the game against Sacramento but easily handled Memphis to go 1-1 against the tankers. With four games left, they can likely control their destiny if they can sweep Miami, which they host for two games in Toronto this week. They then go on the road against the third-seeded Knicks next Friday before finishing at home on Sunday against the woeful Nets. Meaningful basketball.