Celts drop further back
Toronto goes up 3 games
TORONTO — There was lots of talk last night about playoff atmosphere, and visions of an Eastern Conference finals matchup between its top two teams.
Winner of the first road game would be anyone’s guess.
The regular season series ended in a 2-2 tie after the Celtics’ 96-78 loss to the Raptors, with each team winning both home games.
The Celtics dropped three games behind Toronto in the conference standings, with four to play.
Terry Rozier returned to the lineup after missing one game with an ankle issue and struggled to find his shot, finishing with two points on 1-for9 shooting. But on a night when the Celtics shot 33.3 percent (25-for-75), Rozier was hardly alone. Al Horford shot 5-for-13 for his 16 points, and Jayson Tatum hit a low ebb with eight points on 4-for-10 shooting.
The Celtics had been hit hard in two quarters by Toronto runs, including a 20-3 burst in the second and an 11-1 third quarter run that staked the Raptors to a 6753 edge to start the fourth.
The big combination of Horford, Marcus Morris and Greg Monroe pulled the Celts back within range early in the fourth with a Horford 3-pointer, followed by a Monroe dunk, cutting the Raptors lead to 78-66 with 7:42 left.
But Fred VanVleet scored his eighth straight point, including his second straight 3-pointer, for an 81-66 Raptors lead.
The teams swapped baskets over four possessions, before Morris made inroads with a three-point play that cut the Toronto lead to 85-73 with 4:55 left. But with Toronto’s lead back up to 14 points, Morris was whistled for a charge.
Lucas Nogueira responded with his fourth straight point and an 89-73 Toronto lead with 4:02 left. By the time Segre Ibaka cut past a cleared out defense for a dunk, the Raptors held a 91-75 lead with 2:32 left, and the Celts had run out of challenges.
Both teams went into halftime shooting under 40 percent, but with one big difference. Toronto opened up a 43-33 lead thanks to a 20-3 run that, in turn, was helped along by seven of the Celts’ nine turnovers in the quarter. They also scored only 13 points in the second.
And midway through the third, they were struggling to keep the Raptors within 10 points, with DeMar DeRozan doing particular damage with a threepoint play and a 3-pointer crammed into a 40-second stretch.
By the time Lowry buried a 3 with 3:31 left in the quarter, Toronto led 60-45. Lowry’s bomb also gave heft to Toronto’s latest run, an 11-1 stretch for a 66-46 lead, with VanVleet doing the honors from downtown.
The Celtics closed the first quarter out with a 7-0 run, including five points from Monroe, for a 20-14 lead. The pace was much to their liking, even with the Celts shooting 42.1 percent over the first 12 minutes. The Raptors were significantly colder, at 28.1 percent.
Monroe, who has bemoaned his own lack of finishes, appeared to latch onto something, scoring early in the second off a put-back and going to the line and hitting twice off another offensive board with 7:37 left for a 26-23 lead.
Then the mistakes came — four straight, to be precise, providing fuel for an 11-0 Toronto run for a 3426 lead with 4:03 left in the half.
The Celtics continued to throw the ball away with miscues seven and eight of the quarter, and Toronto extended the run to 203, taking a 43-29 lead on a DeRozan 3-pointer, a margin the C’s cut to 43-33 by halftime.