At least on paper, the Toronto Raptors’ strategy of dealing with Jayson Tatum’s high-level scoring worked.
Tatum has only 12.5 points per game against the Raptors, his lowest scoring average against any team he has faced four times this season. To put that into perspective, it accounts for about half of the 22-year-old’s total points per game (23.5).
Defending him more than anyone else for Toronto was Kyle Lowry, an exuberant point guard who is the absolute heart and soul of the franchise.
Don’t miss NBC Sports Boston’s coverage of Celtics-Raptors Game 1, which begins Thursday at 5:30 pm with Celtics Pregame Live. You can also stream Celtics Pregame Live and Celtics Postgame Live on the MyTeams app.
While Tatum was successful at throwing the ball when guarded by Lowry (he’s 7 of 11 this season when Lowry is Toronto’s main defender), it’s the lack of quantity and not the quality of the shots that stands out.
So the Raptors have every right to feel good about how Tatum is handling the scorer.
But here’s the problem for Toronto. As impressive as their defense was in limiting Tatum’s gains, he was the creator of the difference when these two played with his defense.
Tatum has often spoken of the importance of his defense as the key to Boston’s success. Against the Raptors, no truer words were spoken. How good was a Tatum defender against Toronto? Like Kawhi Leonard / Paul George / Marcus Smart well.
Start with his defensive evaluation.
For most players, having that number around 100 is considered an exceptional defense. But Tatum? His defensive rating was less than 100.0 in all four games this season against Toronto but one.
And that match ended in a 113-97 Celtics defeat on December 28 with Tatum’s defensive score of a respectable 109.3.
But it is clear that Tatum has made some changes since that meeting. Because the next time he faced the Raptors, Tatum’s defense was on another level throughout the game.
When the carnage was calculated and the final score was a 122-100 Celtics win on August 7, Tatum walked off the pitch under the Orlando Bubble after finishing with an insanely effective defensive rating of 67.7.
Of course, the Raptors should take some comfort in the fact that they did their part to prevent Tatum from playing great offensively games with him scoring no more than 18 points in any match against Toronto this season.
It’s not even that hard to believe that Tatum will struggle to score in this series.
But the Celtics don’t want Tatum to have great scoring nights or anything like that. Sure, they love it when it happens.
But here’s what they love even more: winning.
And that’s something Tatum has done a lot this season against Toronto, doing it with his defense – not offensive – adding to the challenges facing reigning NBA champion Toronto Raptors in their quest to outrun a Celtics team that’s playing. some of the best basketball of any team in the playoffs and looks set to run their league this year.
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