Out of gas at end of long road trip
Boston’s Ojeleye, Pritchard heat up from three-point range
It wasn’t a matter of playing hard because the Raptors certainly did that to end a long grind of a road trip in Boston on Thursday.
It’s just that they didn’t play effectively enough.
A handful of missed shots right at the rim, a couple of stepslow defensive breakdowns and an empty gas tank down the stretch conspired to cost them a 120-106 loss to the Celtics at the TD Garden.
It 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 Kyle Lowry for almost a complete one because of back spasms. They also played a couple of back-to-backs.
Lowry finished with 24 points Thursday and Pascal Siakam had 23 but the Raptors were ineffective from three-point range and let a couple of relatively unknown Celtics go off.
Semi Ojeleye made a career high six three-pointers and had 24 points and Payton Pritchard made six threes and scored 20. They made up for so-so nights from all-stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, who combined for only 29 points.
The loss dropped the Raptors to 12-14 but they maintained a spot in the very muddled middle of the Eastern Conference.
Going into Thursday’s game, only five games separated third place from 13th as no teams can gain any real 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,” Raptors coach Nick Nurse said before the game.
“There’s some new surprises … it seems like 25 teams in the league are two or three games under .500 or two or three games over … I think there’s a lot of teams that are really similar.” á A stretch of ineptitude: The Raptors were finishing a backto-back and Boston was playing its first game at home after a six-game western road trip.
It was expected there would be some tired legs and some sloppy play but the teams went through a stretch of truly awful basketball in the third quarter.
Toronto went more than four minutes without scoring a single point while Boston had a scoreless stretch of more than five minutes. At one point, the teams combined to miss 18 straight shots. á Maybe Sunday: OG Anunoby missed his ninth straight game with a strained left calf and the Raptors could have used his perimeter defence.
Nurse did say he expects Anunoby back Sunday when Toronto begins a stretch of four games in six nights, two against Minnesota and two in Milwaukee. “I think there’s still a little tenderness there, but we’ve got a chance to get several more days in here,” the coach said.
Yuta Watanabe, who sat out his second game with a sprained left ankle, could also return Sunday. á Heads-up play: DeAndre’ Bembry, who has filled in admirably as a jack-of-all-trades substitute with Anunoby out, made a nice little drop pass to Aron Baynes for a five-footer in the first half Thursday.