Toronto Raptors shorthanded lineup unable to overcome potent Celtics

Playing for the first time at home on Christmas Day, the Toronto Raptors were given a tough dose of reality against the Boston Celtics.

For the past three games, the Toronto Raptors have put up a tough fight since losing Pascal Siakam, Marc Gasol and Norma Powell but they needed more than that to have any chance of beating the Boston Celtics.

Against a healthy and talented Celtics’ lineup, the Raptors were finding ways to get points and keep it close when Boston went on scoring runs but it seemed like it was only a matter of time until mistakes would prove to be costly.

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Even head coach Nick Nurse admitted that the team had been grinding it out and that it was starting to wear on the players who have been asked to step into roles they usually don’t play.

"“We’re pretty short on our roster,” said Raptors head coach Nick Nurse afterwards. “We’ve played a lot minutes, these guys, a lot of games in a lot of days, the schedule hasn’t been very good to us. This is our third game in four days, one was an overtime game, one was a come-from-30-points-behind game, where we used a lot of energy too, so I don’t know. Maybe we just need a little rest.”"

While the Raptors had every excuse to be fatigued given they went through a back-to-back stretch where they had to overcome deficits. At some point, you are going to have a letdown performance and it’s unfortunate that it happened against a division rival in one of the most hyped up games of the season.

Fred VanVleet led the team with 27 points but was 2-for-5 from three-point range while they didn’t exactly get much of a player like Patrick McCaw who had two points and three rebounds in 32 minutes of action. Chris Boucher stepped up big time scoring 24 points off the bench while the rest of the reserves had 18 points collectively.

It was certainly a valiant effort but the Raptors weren’t in a position to ride Kyle Lowry and VanVleet for 40-plus minutes again and expect them to be effective.

Hopefully, they can regroup when both teams meet in Boston but for now, you take the lessons and move on.