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The Eastern Conference semifinal series between the Toronto Raptors and the Boston Celtics has taken an unexpected path to an expected destination. The Celtics were within half a second of taking a 3-0 lead, but now we have a 2-2 series with a pivotal Game 5 on Monday (6:30 pm ET, TNT).
With a place in the conference finale coming down to three games, here are three things to know about what we’ve seen so far …
A head start
The Raptors apparently had a depth advantage going into this series with Gordon Hayward out, Marcus Smart in Boston’s starting lineup and legitimate questions about everyone left on the Celtics bench. The Raptors had * the best bench in the NBA in the regular season. And then they had the best bench in the first round of the playoffs, beating ** the Brooklyn Nets by 72 points (28.4 per 100 possessions) in 116 minutes with Norman Powell and / or Serge Ibaka on the floor.
* Based on aggregate bank NetRtg (estimated).
** Necessary context: Brooklyn’s depleted bank was pretty terrible.
But for the first two games of this series, Toronto had minus 20 in Powell and Ibaka’s 32 minutes together. With Celtics backup center Robert Williams III going 10-for-10, Boston was taking the minutes off the bench.
In those first two games, the Raps went minus-1 in 64 minutes with Fred VanVleet and Kyle Lowry together on the court and, incredibly, a minus-30 in 17 minutes with VanVleet on the court without Lowry. The solution was simply not to let Lowry rest. The 34-year-old point guard played 46:29 in Game 3 and then 43:47 in Game 4.
He’s not the only Raptor whose minutes have been extended. Pascal Siakam has played the entire second half in each of the last three games. OG Anunoby played the entire second half of Game 3 (topping him with his only three points from those 24 minutes), and VanVleet played the entire second half of Game 4.
> Game 5: Celtics vs. Raptors, Monday at 6:30 ET on TNT
The Raptors starters have been pretty good. After being outscored in Game 1, Toronto’s starting lineup is a plus-24 in 62 minutes in the last three games. That breaks down to a plus-30 in 37 minutes against Boston’s starting lineup and a minus-6 in 25 minutes otherwise.
Celtics coach Brad Stevens replaced Williams in place of Daniel Theis just 2 1/2 minutes into Game 4, apparently preferring Williams’s matchup against Marc Gasol. After playing 13 of his 50 minutes against Gasol for the first three games, Williams played 12 of his 15 minutes against Gasol in Game 4.
For the series, Boston is a plus-10 with the Time Lord vs Big Spain showdown, and we could see more in the future.
The second trimester: not pretty
That headline lead for Toronto has manifested itself more in the third quarter than in the first. While they have been outscored by 39 points, the Raptors have a plus-26, having scored 129.8 points per 100 possessions, in the third period.
Siakam has about the same number of cubes in the third quarter (when he is 13 out of 25) as in the other three periods combined (14 out of 45). Anunoby is 8 of 10 in the third, Ibaka has made his four 3-point attempts in the third quarter and the Raps have scored at least 125 points per 100 possessions in the four third quarters.
The second quarter, meanwhile, has been brutal … on both ends of the court. Both teams have scored less than one point per possession in the four second trimesters of the series. The accumulated score in 48 minutes of the second quarter is Celtics 88, Raptors 76.
This has been the least efficient of the four conference semifinal series. As of Sunday, the Celtics (104.6 points per 100 possessions) and the Raptors (101.0) rank seventh and eighth in offensive efficiency this round. Toronto’s offense has improved since the first two games, while Boston’s offense had its worst game of the playoffs on Saturday, with the Raptors defense playing a not insignificant role in the Celtics shooting 7 of 35 from range. 3 points. .
It seems unlikely that either team is going to finish off a great offensive performance in Game 5. However, perhaps one could at least score a point per possession in the second quarter.
Celtics fight the zone
The Raptors played the third most zone in the regular season, based on Synergy’s gameplay tracking. And they’ve played more than twice the zone in this series than in the first round against Brooklyn. The champions have zone in 55 (14%) of Boston’s offensive possessions.
There have been some one and two triangle zone possessions, and in the last quarter of Game 4, we saw some one box and one possessions. But for the most part, the Raptors have used a 2-3 or 2-1-2 zone. And in four games, the Celtics haven’t quite figured it out.
Boston has scored just 47 points on those 55 zone possessions, a rate of 85 per 100 possessions. They have hit 15 of 42 (6 of 23 from 3-point range), with more turnovers (16) than shots from the field. Otherwise (in transition and against man-to-man), the Celtics have scored 108 points per 100 possessions.
The only good stretch the Celtics had against the zone was late in the third quarter of Game 3, when they scored 15 points on eight possessions. The first of those eight was probably his most aesthetically pleasing possession against the zone …
The Raptors’ 21 zone possessions in Game 3 were more than they played in Games 1 and 2 combined (19). And despite the Celtics’ success in that stretch of the third quarter, Toronto returned with him midway through the first quarter of Game 4 on Saturday. There was a bad break (allowing a Williams dunk), but Boston scored just 13 points on 15 possessions against zone in Game 4, turning the ball over four times.
A possession early in the fourth quarter against box-and-one included a lot of player movement, but the Raptors covered it well. And when the movement stopped, Marcus Smart made one of those turnovers at the end of the clock …
The Celtics are obviously reviewing their zone offense between games, but the need to rest on days off can make it difficult to perform live-action practice replays. Expect to see more in Game 5.
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John Schuhmann is a Senior Statistics Analyst at NBA.com. You can email him here, find his file here and follow him on twitter.
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