Rough Last Two Minutes As The Celtics Once Again Drop A Game In Toronto
The good news is, this game lived up to the hype. The teams that are considered the top 2 in the East sure played like it and this thing was a battle wire to wire. We knew that going in, just like we knew it would be a tough place for the Celts to win. The positive spin is they were right there, until about two minutes left on a night where they didn’t shoot all that well and were allergic to the foul line. They were able to trade blows for about 95% of the game, while still figuring out how to play together. That’s a positive. Gordon Hayward looked a billion percent better than Tuesday, that’s also a positive.
But, they also showed their warts. For a team that prided itself on fourth quarter basketball last year, tonight’s was the opposite of what you want to see. Get in the bonus very early and don’t attack, end up scoring your fewest points while showing no signs of being able to get a stop on the other end. That’s the frustrating part. If you want to say they gagged away the win, I wouldn’t argue. A winnable game blown thanks to a late 10-0 run. The Raptors looked very much like the Raptors of old that give this team fits in this building, which great offensive rebounding and timely dagger threes. You can’t take a possession off against them, especially at home, and the Celtics sure did that.
It’s the second game of the year, there’s a loooonnnng way to go, but with how close these two teams are going to be, head to head matchups matter. It’s a normal regular season game in early October sure, but there’s more at stake against TOR than someone random. I think we can all agree it would be rather difficult to have a Game 7 in this building. Hopefully this serves as a reminder for the rest of the year whenever these two teams play.
We’ve seen the Celtics lose this type of game a million times, as I wrote in my earlier blog they almost never win in this building. Sucks, but it’s just 1 of 82, you just wish they closed out what would have been a very impressive road win. Oh well, you know what we do next
