Collapsing like a deck of cards to the Toronto Raptors perfectly encapsulated everything that’s been wrong with the Boston Celtics as of late.
Toronto, a team better suited for tanking to draft Cooper Flagg than clinching a playoff berth, pulled the rug out from underneath Boston on Wednesday night. The reigning champions were in full health and arrived at Scotiabank Arena as the seventh-worst 3-point shooting team — at 32.8% — in the league since the start of 2025, and even that wasn’t enough of a wake-up call.
Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown combined for a season-low 26 points, as a duo, on 9-of-31 shooting from the field en route to a 110-97 defeat.
Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla issued a message to Boston’s locker room in Toronto amid a 7-7 slump in the team’s last 14 games.
“Just stick together,” Mazzulla told reporters, as seen on NBC Sports Boston’s postgame coverage. “Obviously, we’re not playing our best basketball. You can’t expect things to always be easy. You can’t have an expectation that it’s always supposed to go your way, cause it’s not. We just have to find a way to enjoy the challenge but make sure that we do it together. … You just have to enjoy the challenge of going through it. That’s a great test of what the NBA season presents so we just gotta find the joy in that.”
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Boston, less than four weeks ago, recess bullied the same Toronto team during their New Year’s Eve meeting at TD Garden, issuing a 125-71 loss that marked the all-time worst in Raptors franchise history. This time, Toronto’s vengeance overpowered, overperformed and overwhelmed the Celtics amid a sure bet matchup.
Once the Raptors discovered the formula for punishment — interior scoring — the uphill climb became an avalanche effort from the C’s. Boston’s defense allowed Toronto to shoot 73.7%% from the floor in the third quarter and cement the game-establishing run to exploit the Celtics and their ongoing issues — scoring, intensity, and adjustments.
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Mazzulla succumbed ultimately with 1:22 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter making a five-man switch to unload the bench.
“We just weren’t great on either end of the floor,” Mazzulla said.
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Payton Pritchard’s 20 points off the bench and Tatum’s near triple-double (16 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists) were the few rays of hope that kept the Celtics in the running for a victory. Tatum’s sluggish 5-for-15 performance from the field didn’t get in the way of the five-time All-Star’s involvement in every other area, but it was far from enough to clean up the bigger-picture mess.
Derrick White’s All-Star candidacy collapse — White has shot 22% from three over his last five games — coupled with the team’s defensive struggle against the pick-and-roll with mobile big men, subjected the C’s to pay the price. That price was too steep for Mazzulla’s clipboard, Tatum’s toughness and Boston’s will to play catch-up.
Toronto snapped its 10-game losing streak when facing the Celtics, dropping them to 28-12 on the campaign, following their 21-5 start.
Until Boston puts its foot down firmly, teams across the league will continue to poke at their vulnerabilities and exploit the title defenders in ways that’ll question whether or not the championship hangover is in play.
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Featured image via John E. Sokolowski/Imagn Images
