This weird season series ended tonight with the Raptors (21-39, 12-19) topping the Celtics (34-25, 13-16 away) 84-79 at Air Canada Centre.
You can't make sense of how Boston beat Toronto by 23 and 36 earlier in the season before losing to them twice and not scoring 80 in either of those contests. Therefore I won't spend much time on this forgettable stinker.
Another reason to move on is that this was the start of the Celtics' only back-to-back-to-back scenario of 2011-12 (every team has one). Spread out, it's four games in five nights.
DeMar Derozan scored a game-high 22 points (13 for 13 from the line) for Toronto and Linas Kleiza had 17 points and eight rebounds off the bench. I know the Celtics mailed it in since something called Alan Anderson scored 12, Amir Johnson had 10 points and nine rebounds and Aaron Gray grabbed 10 rebounds.
Boston didn't have Ray Allen but that's trumped by Toronto missing its two best players: Andrea Bargnani and Jose Calderon.
Paul Pierce led the Celtics with 18 points and eight rebounds. Avery Bradley scored 15 points, Kevin Garnett had a modest 13 points and 10 rebounds, Brandon Bass added 10 points and Rajon Rondo reached double-digit assists for the 20th straight game with eight points, 12 assists (0 turnovers) and four steals. Normally I wouldn't complain about nice numbers like that but when Rondo faces a nobody like Ben Uzoh (that's his real name), he needs to produce way more.
After leading 20-13 after one quarter and 36-30 at halftime (high school basketball style), Toronto rocked Boston with a 27-11 third quarter. The C's recovered in the fourth (32-27) but it was too late. They were down 66-51 and cut it to 80-77 but Pierce badly missed a 3 and that was that.
In their tour of shitbums around the Eastern Conference, the Celtics next visit the New Jersey Nets tomorrow night. After this nightmare, a loss then is completely unacceptable. Boston needs to win that one.
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