Celts stuck in second
DeRozan, Toronto still on top
TORONTO — All you have to know about the Celtics right now is what coach Brad Stevens doesn’t like about his team.
“If you’re the same in April as you are now, you’re probably in trouble,” Stevens said last night before the Celtics lost their chance to tie the Toronto Raptors for first place in the Atlantic Division and second in the Eastern Conference standings.
DeMar DeRozan scored 12 of his 41 points in a 21-4 closing run that gave the Raptors a 114-106 win.
It was easy for Stevens, under the circumstances, to revisit his pregame comments. What he saw only validated his greatest concerns. The C’s still don’t play well when put in the gym against an uppercrust team.
“My biggest thing is we have to get a lot better,” Stevens said. “I said that before we met today for this game, and I probably saw more encouraging signs of progress than I did negative, but at the end of the day, they had their way in the last six minutes of each of the last two quarters.”
For all of their recent success — they have only lost three of their past 13 games and had a four-game winning streak snapped last night — the Celtics unraveled like the tape around Jae Crowder’s sore postgame ankles once Toronto increased the pressure down the stretch.
Isaiah Thomas turned in a 27-point performance that included nine in the fourth quarter, but he missed his last two shots. He was soundly blocked, first by DeMarre Carroll and then by the man who shut down the paint on the visitors, center Jonas Valanciunas. DeRozan’s closing act aside, the 7-foot Valanciunas’ 18 points and 23 rebounds exposed the Celtics where they are at their weakest — on the interior.
“They turn it up. They always have. They can really athletically get into you,” Stevens said. “They can really press into you with those four smalls if you count DeRozan and DeMarre Carroll as small, right? And then (Kyle) Lowry and (Cory) Joseph, you’ve got Valanciunas who I think is really doing a great job in all the pick-and-roll stuff, and he was dominant at the rim, on the glass and protecting the paint.”
Though teams now routinely blitz and doubleteam Thomas, including the Raptors when he was off the ball, last night marked the rare time when he was unable to bail out the offense.
“Teams get more aggressive. They got more aggressive with me. They had two guys on me,” Thomas said. “Even when I didn’t come off pick-and-rolls, they had Joseph and those guys fullout denying me. And we have to figure out how to play when teams do that. So other guys have to make plays at that end. But at the end of the day, it comes down to getting stops. They were in a rhythm the last five or six minutes where they were in the bonus. And it’s tough to play defense when a team’s in the bonus.”
Never mind, then, when a player like DeRozan is making his nightly bid for Player of the Week honors.
Thomas tied the game at 104-104, only for Valanciunas to draw a foul fighting for an offensive rebound. His two free throws gave Toronto the lead for good with 2:02 left.
Thomas was asked about Stevens’ comment that the Celtics simply aren’t good enough right now.
“Yeah,” Thomas said with a nod. “We have to be able to execute down the stretch. That’s playoff basketball to a T. We have to be able to execute on both ends and figure out how to win close games.”