The real question is why the Celtics needed a 22-point comeback at all.
Boston beat Toronto 98-93 after trailing by 22, the biggest deficit the Celtics have faced all season. Treating that number as proof of championship grit is lazy mythology, the kind that gets good teams exposed come spring. A team that digs a first-half hole that size against a Raptors squad missing Scottie Barnes and Kawhi Leonard has a structural problem, one that got bailed out by its best player's fourth quarter.
It was worse than a slow start. Toronto torched Boston from three in the first quarter, going 10-for-18 from deep to tie a franchise record for a single period, with 15 of the Raptors' first 19 shots coming from beyond the arc. That's a defense that let a shorthanded team get whatever look it wanted for an entire quarter, and the bill came due as a 22-point hole.
Rating
RatingJayson Tatum erased it on his own. He did Jayson Tatum things on a night he could not buy a shot: 24 points, 7 rebounds, 8 assists, but just 6 of 21 from the field and 2 of 11 from three. He went scoreless through the third quarter before a personal run flipped the game, then closed it out by making the tying and go-ahead free throws late in the fourth. He got there by living at the free throw line, where he alone took more free throws in this one game than Boston's entire roster attempted two nights earlier in Philadelphia. That's an indictment of the offense: when your star needs that many trips to the stripe to cover a 6-for-21 night, you won on foul luck and one guy's talent instead of execution, and it happened on the second night of a back-to-back against a team already missing two of its best players.
Good teams find ways to win when the plan breaks down, and Sam Hauser's steal and the finishing sequence — Queta's free throws, Hauser sealing it — show a group that doesn't panic. Composure in the final minute is real and it matters. It still doesn't erase the first quarter. A team that entered the night atop the Eastern Conference cannot spot a team that fell under .500 a 22-point lead and call that survival acceptable. This roster has shown that flaw twelve games into the season.
RTGBoston is 10-2, winners of five straight, and they'll take the result before hosting Dallas on Sunday. The lesson from Toronto is that the margin for error against a healthy, complete opponent is a lot thinner than a five-game streak suggests. Until the defense that let a shorthanded team hit 10 threes in a quarter gets fixed, every comeback like this one is a warning.
