Rolling into the playoffs: 10 Takeaways from Boston Celtics-Toronto Raptors

1. The Boston Celtics had nothing to play for against the Toronto Raptors on Friday night. The Raptors still had a chance to get into the 7-8 Play-In Tournament Game, so it was a meaningful game for them. But, instead of what might have been expected, Boston overwhelmed Toronto and it was a blowout.

Several regular sat this one out, as they are nursing injuries heading into the playoffs. Nothing is considered overly serious for Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart or Malcolm Brogdon, but all could use the time off their feet.

Without those three, Boston’s depth dominated in this game. Jayson Tatum set the tone, but it was the Celtics that are lower on the depth chart that carried the team throughout the second half.

It was a nice step forward for the deeper bench players, as they’ll probably get all the minutes they can handle in Sunday’s meaningless regular season finale.

2. Jayson Tatum drew three and-1s on Friday night. He was in attack mode right from the jump, and a long, athletic, Raptors team could do little to stop Tatum.

On this one, Tatum gets his shoulders by Jakob Poeltl and takes the little bump from behind as he lays it in:

A little later, Tatum uses his crossover to get downhill on Scottie Barnes before hanging after the contact for the and-1:

One more time, late in the first half, Tatum attacked against a scrambled Toronto defense and went right through the contact for a third and-1:

3. Before he exited the game for the night at halftime, Jayson Tatum did plenty of playmaking too. This first assist is a delayed pick-and-roll with Rob Williams. With Jakob Poeltl up the floor, Tatum puts the pass is where only Rob Williams can get it:

This is a high-level find from Tatum to Sam Hauser. The good thing? We’re seeing more and more of this from Tatum all the time:

4. Speaking of Sam Hauser…he set a new career-high with 26 points. There were six threes in the bunch, because of course he hit a bunch of them. But Hauser dunked three times. Not only did he dunk three times, but they were the first three dunks of Hauser’s NBA career!

The first one came on the break off a nice setup from Al Horford:

The last of the three came on this cut, and sent the Celtics bench into hysterics:

5. Rob Williams is looking a lot like ROB again. He was everywhere in this game and did a little bit of everything.

You can play drop coverage against screen actions when your big can make up ground like this:

Now that he’s finding…