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Tim BontempsESPN
TORONTO — Jaylen Brown had never won a game here against the Raptors in his NBA career.
All it took to change that was arguably the best game of his career.
Behind a sensational third quarter, in which Brown scored 16 points and went 5-for-5 from the floor (including 3-for-3 from 3-point range), the fourth-year forward finished with a game-high 30 points to lead the Boston Celtics to a 118-102 victory over the Toronto Raptors, who were hosting their first Christmas Day game.
“It was good to get a win here on Christmas,” Brown said. “I’d never won here, period, so it was great to get one.”
It also was a big change from the way the past three Christmas Day games have gone for Brown, as his third-quarter outburst was more than the 12 points he’d scored in all three of those games combined.
“I was feeling good,” said Brown, who scored those 30 points while going 10-for-13 from the field. “I was just trying to play within the game. Not a lot of playcalls.
“[I was] just scoring within the game, and that kind of just led to making baskets, and continuing to be efficient regardless of whatever how it goes out there, just take advantage of whatever opportunities you can get.”
For both Brown and the Celtics, the opportunity was to finally win a game here against the Raptors — something none of the players in uniform had done while playing in Boston. Not only was the game the first the Raptors have hosted on Christmas since the franchise’s inception in 1995, it also was the first time in more than four years — since Nov. 10, 2015, against the New York Knicks — that the Raptors lost a home game against an Atlantic Division opponent. Per Elias Sports Bureau research, that intra-division home winning streak — which totaled 34 games — was the longest in NBA history.
Toronto, which made a comeback here from being down 30 points late in the third quarter Sunday against the Dallas Mavericks and then lost in overtime at Indiana Monday, was led by Fred VanVleet’s 27 points. And playing without Pascal Siakam (groin), Norman Powell (shoulder) and Marc Gasol (hamstring), it appeared the Raptors ran out of gas as the game wore on — something coach Nick Nurse admitted afterward.
“A little bit,” he said. “I think our spirit was a little up and down, then I think we caught it … I think we had a chance to cut it to 10 there in the fourth after slapping on the press, and we lost our spirit quickly.
“I’m not sure why. But we lost our spirit quickly, and that was it.”
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That allowed Boston to pull away and win here for the first time since April 4, 2015 — a one-point overtime win in what was coach Brad Stevens’ second season on the sidelines. The Celtics had lost eight games in a row here since then, and Stevens had gone just 1-11 here heading into Wednesday’s game. The only player on the team who was on the roster then was Marcus Smart — who missed his seventh straight game on Christmas as he continues to recover from a diabolical eye infection that spread to both eyes and left him bedridden for much of the past two weeks.
The fact that streak finally ended was largely because of Brown’s spectacular play — especially in the third quarter, when he helped the Celtics grow what was an eight-point halftime advantage into a 19-point lead after three quarters, all but ending the game.
“Just being aggressive,” Brown said, when asked what changed in the third quarter. “Just trying to get involved. I didn’t take a lot of shots, so I was just trying to be efficient as possible.”
Brown reached the 30-point plateau for the third time this season — after getting there just twice in his first three seasons in the NBA. It’s just one of many signs of the significant leap forward Brown has made in his game this season — a leap that has him possibly en route to making his first All-Star Game in February.
“He’s just playing with confidence,” said Raptors guard Kyle Lowry, who played on Christmas for the first time in his 14th NBA season. “He played with extreme confidence. He played with some bounce tonight.
“I think his overall game was just flowing tonight. When he’s making his 3, it makes him really difficult to guard.”
That was certainly the case in this one, as Brown went 5-for-7 from deep. He combined with Kemba Walker, who scored 22 points, to go 10-for-17 from 3-point range. Both of them finished one triple shy of tying the single-game record for 3-pointers made on Christmas Day, which Kyle Kuzma, Kevin Love and Ryan Anderson each have done. As a team, Boston finished with 14 3-pointers — which was one shy of the team record for 3-pointers made in a Christmas Day game before the Philadelphia 76ers shattered it with 21 in the second game of Wednesday’s quintupleheader of NBA action.
None of that will matter much to the Celtics, though, who have now won four games in a row, got Gordon Hayward (14 points, 5 rebounds and 6 assists in 26 minutes) back after missing three games with a nerve issue in his left foot, have Smart potentially returning by the end of the month and sit in second place in the Eastern Conference standings — despite rarely having their full complement of players available to them this season.
“I’ve said it, but we have good players from top to bottom,” Hayward said. “And when we space correctly, and we play within ourselves and within the system of how we want to play, we’re pretty tough.”
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