Siakam’s force helps Raptors take overtime win from shorthanded Celtics – Sportsnet.ca

The Boston Celtics have been the best team in the Eastern Conference in 2022 and the best team in the NBA for the last two months.

Their dominance has been so convincing that they are getting credible buzz as a title contender – impressive for a team that was three games under .500 through the first 39 games of the season.

Boston righted their ship from there and have been absolutely on fire since late January.

“The run that they’re on is as hot as anybody’s been that I can remember,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse before his team hosted the Celtics on Monday night. “I don’t have the exact numbers, 24-4 or something like that?

“I’m in there watching and every score that’s coming from all the clips that are coming is 30 points. It’s hard to find a competitive clip in there,” said Nurse.

The rest of the league will have one now as the Raptors downed the Celtics 115-112 in overtime thanks to another dominant performance by Pascal Siakam.

It was harder than might have been expected given the dominant version of the Celtics didn’t make it across the border. Traveling on the second night of a back-to-back, the Celtics kept star wings Jayson Tatum and Jalen Brown back in Boston. Also missing was Al Horford who has missed a pair of games for personal reasons.

Of greater concern Boston head coach Ime Udoka confirmed that Robert Williams – the agile rim protector who has been the backbone of their NBA-best defense – will have surgery to repair a torn cartilage in his knee and will be out for six weeks or perhaps more.

And hey, the Raptors – led in large part by their own star, Pascal Siakam — have been rolling along pretty well themselves in the New Year and especially lately with eight wins in their past 10..

So, on paper it might have looked like an easy night.

It wasn’t. Boston showed they are more than their headline acts as they pushed Toronto all the way to the limit and then some even while missing four of their five starters.

“It just goes to show you, I mean that’s why they’re so good,” said Nurse. “They’ve got some guys that have played in this league, and they’ve got some serious depth. I knew it was tough mentally on us to see those guys out. We came out and played like, ‘Oh, this is this, you know, who we gotta play against tonight’. I knew it was gonna be tough on us and I knew those guys were really good.”

Still, the Raptors showed why it’s great to have their best players available and playing his best as Siakam scored a season-high 40 points while grabbing 13 rebounds before fouling out with 51.4 seconds to play and Toronto up three. He also had three steals and two blocks in 47 minutes.

The Raptors were able to get it over the finish line from there as Gary Trent Jr. both his free throws with 14.4 seconds left to preserve the win.

The win improved Toronto to 43-32 and with the Chicago Bulls loss pulled the Raptors into a tie for fifth place in the East, though Chicago has the tiebreaker based on them winning the season series with the Raptors. Boston dropped to 47-29 and are in fourth-place, one game behind first-place Miami in the tightly packed East.

In addition to Siakam’s heroics the Raptors had all five starters in double figures and got 12 points, eight rebounds, three assists and three blocked shots off the bench from veteran Thad Young who played 28 minutes off the bench back-filling for Scottie Barnes who fouled out midway through the fourth quarter. 

But they won their game with their defense as Toronto held Boston to 40.5 per cent from the floor in the second half and 1-of-9 in overtime helped along by four blocked shots – two by Siakam, who was playing with five fouls, but didn’t let that hold him back.

“It’s a tough line you have to walk through and it’s hard,” said Siakam, who picked up his fifth foul with 2:49 left in the fourth quarter. “For me, it was just instinct and doing whatever I felt at the time. For the longest time I thought I had four fouls, to be honest with you, when I had five fouls I thought I had four in my head, so, maybe if I didn’t think that I would’ve been a little less aggressive, but I just wanted to make plays and we needed those plays. I felt like, why not, I wasn’t really thinking about fouling out to be honest.”

The Celtics broke open a tie game with three quick triples from their bench unit to start the fourth quarter as part of a 14-7 run that put Toronto on their heels. But the Raptors clawed their way back and consecutive triples by Fred VanVleet shifted the momentum inside four minutes, helping a seven-point the Celtics lead with 4:12 to play to just one. But Toronto was still trailing by four with 58 seconds to go before Siakam scored at the rim on one of his spin moves and then tied the game on the line with 12.6 seconds to play, forcing the extra period.

Carrying the offense has become a comfortable habit for Siakam who has averaged 27.5 points a game over the Raptors last 14 starts which have overlapped with various injuries to VanVleet, Trent Jr. and Anunoby.

“He did a good job of getting to the front of the rim, making good decisions,” said Nurse. “And yeah, I mean listen it was kind of what was available, and he was getting deep, and he was scoring them.”

Siakam scored 10 in the first quarter, which Toronto trailed 38-30 and exploded for 15 in the second to give the Raptors a 59-58 lead at half. The Celtics tightened things down in the second half, but by then the Raptors defense was locking in as well.

Said Siakam; “I think the way they were guarding me there wasn’t much pressure, so I had a head of steam to get to the rim and those baskets, those touch baskets that I usually have, they fell, which helped. Again, it depends on how they’re playing me, and I felt like I had an advantage.”

That the Celtics kept their top talent home could be a theme as the regular season winds down. Toronto has seven games left, five at home, and it’s hard to find too many opponents remaining who will be all that interested in competing. The Minnesota Timberwolves – in town Wednesday – will be, as they try to snag sixth place in the West. But otherwise?

Like Boston, Miami and Philadelphia could well angling to slide back to the third seed and avoid a potential match-up with the dangerous Brooklyn Nets – who most feel will end up in seventh or eighth place after the play-in tournament. Atlanta will likely be trying to work their way into a favourable spot in the play-in tournament, but all of Orlando, Houston and New York have more to gain from losing than winning.

It all bodes well for the Raptors hanging onto the sixth seed and even moving up to fifth.

Nowhere did the Celtics show they were missing their top two wings and top two centre options more than on the defensive end and no one was more effective exploiting in than Siakam.

Early in the opening quarter the Raptors recognized that Boston was short of options to defend Siakam off the dribble in space and so they simply did everything they could to get Siakam isolated in the middle of the floor against Daniel Theis or Grant Williams. Theis in particular couldn’t match-up with the Raptors’ leading scorer. At one point in the first quarter Siakam scored four straight buckets on his way to 10 points in the game’s opening 10 minutes.

It took a while for the Raptors to dial in defensively, however, and the remaining Celtics seemed to appreciate the extra looks that came with Brown and Tatum out. All eight Celtics that touched the floor in the first quarter scored as they shot a combined 14-of-25 from the floor and 6-of-12 from three to lead 38-30.

Siakam was hardly finished, and the Celtics remained without an answer – there aren’t many when the Raptors big wing has the ball on a string, room to operate and is on target with his floaters and mid-range jumpers. Siakam kept punishing Boston adding to his total by two making steals on the perimeter and taking the ball the other way on solo fast breaks.

There were only a couple of downsides: One was that Siakam picked up his third foul just before the half as he got whistled for sticking out his lead elbow in the Celtics Grant Williams’ chest one of his spin moves, the other was that even with Siakam’s 25 first half points, Toronto only led the short-handed Celtics 59-58 at half.

Boston shifted their tactics in the third quarter as they began shading multiple defenders his way, collapsing on spins or sometimes using a guard on him to limit his penetration. It was effective – Siakam was held to five points on 1-of-3 shooting and the Raptors didn’t have anyone step up immediately to pitch in as they managed just 21 points on 7-of-25 shooting, as Boston dialed up their defense with five of their seven blocked shots.

Fortunately, the Raptors were making life equally difficult for Boston, who shot just 9-of-25. The two teams were tied 80-80 to start the fourth.

Three-point Grange

1) Nick Nurse has developed a relationship with men’s soccer head coach John Herdman and has followed their qualifying successful qualifying run to the World Cup closely. Does he believe it can inspire the men’s national basketball team to comparable heights? “I think the aftermath of the texts and things that I got kind of sums it up: [basketball people] relating to the tremendous passion, pride [the soccer players] are playing with for their country. A lot of people are seeing that and hoping it can transfer somehow and we can be part of the same thing on the basketball front … I don’t sell our own passion and stuff like that short. I think our guys, when they’re there, they’re really playing for their country with everything they’ve got. I think hopefully the specialness they see is intriguing, being able to accomplish things on a national team front, from sport to sport.”

2) Precious Achiuwa has been one of the Raptors best three-point shooters since the All-Star break, shooting 41.3 per cent on nearly four attempts per game. He set a career mark with four made threes on Saturday against Indiana. He hit his first shot against the Celtics from the top of the circle, proving his ability to do more than catch-and-shoot from the corners. He’s even beginning to dribble into some looks. “We’re OK with him shooting [different threes],” said Nurse. “He’s worked at it. His technique is pretty good. He’s starting to make ‘em and he’s got some confidence. He’s moving around a little bit, as you’ve seen …. he’s got the green light to shoot ‘em as long as they’re pretty much in the rhythm of the offence.”

3) Gary Trent Jr. was questionable before the game with a sprained big toe that had kept him out of three straight starts. Before the game Nurse said his shooting guard was going to play, but then made it sound like he would rather he wouldn’t: “We’ll have to see. He’s not moving that great to be honest with you, from what I’ve seen lately, so I’m surprised he’s ago tonight and that may change by game time, we’ll see what it looks like,” Nurse said. “The most important thing is that we get into a healthy spot quickly so we can get his rhythm back quickly and feel like himself. Even if that means a few minutes tonight to make a step forward. Then that would be helpful.” Trent ended up starting and playing 37 minutes and contributing 12 points.

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