The Toronto Raptors host the Boston Celtics at Scotiabank Arena on Wednesday night, November 11, with tip off set for 7 p.m. ET on TSN and TSN+. Toronto (5-5) comes in off a 118-102 home loss to the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday, while Boston (9-2) arrives as the form team of the Eastern Conference after a 123-101 win over the 76ers in Philadelphia on Tuesday, according to the game preview and broadcast details.
This is a preview of tonight’s game. Nothing about it has been played yet, and the test it sets Toronto is a real one: a short handed home team, on one day of rest, against a deep Boston side playing the second night of a back to back and riding three straight road wins.
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The Injury List Is Toronto’s First Opponent
The Raptors played Monday without starters Kawhi Leonard, Scottie Barnes and Immanuel Quickley, and Collin Murray-Boyles also missed the Memphis game through illness. Reports on the latest injury list have Leonard and Barnes still out for this one, with Quickley among those listed as questionable, which leaves Toronto’s rotation thin at exactly the positions Boston attacks best.
Jamal Shead carried the load against Memphis and produced the best line of his young season: 20 points and 11 assists, leading the team in both categories. RJ Barrett added 19 points, and Jakob Poeltl and Jamison Battle scored 18 apiece. Barrett leads Toronto in scoring this season at 21.3 points per game, and the Raptors average 116.6 points a night, ninth in the league, even with their stars in and out of the lineup. The offence has found ways. The problem has been stopping anyone.
Boston Brings The League’s Second Best Defence
The contrast in styles is the whole ballgame. Boston allows 104.0 points per game, second best in the NBA, and holds opponents down on the road even better, at 100.8 points per game away from home. Toronto allows 113.3 points per game and has given up 118 or more in four of its last five, including the 118 Memphis hung on this building on Monday.
Boston’s attack is just as balanced. Jayson Tatum leads the Celtics at 26.5 points and 7.4 assists per game, and Paul George led them on Tuesday in Philadelphia with a team high 36 points, adding five rebounds. Boston hits 16.2 three pointers per game, second most in the league, against a Toronto team that makes only 11.2 per game at a 31.8 percent clip, among the worst marks in the league. If the three point math runs true to form, Toronto starts the night in a hole it has to climb out of with pace, paint touches and free throws.
The one lever Toronto owns is location. The Raptors score 120.0 points per game at home, nearly six more than they manage on the road, and they defend better in this building too, allowing 107.5 points per game at Scotiabank Arena against 117.2 away. Boston, meanwhile, played last night, travelled, and faces its fourth game in a compressed stretch. Back to back fatigue is not a strategy, but it is a window, and a rested home crowd on a Wednesday night can widen it.
What A Win Would Say About This Team
Toronto has split its first ten games and lost four of its last six, a record that says almost nothing yet about what this group is. A win over the conference leaders, short handed, would say plenty. It would also protect home court in a week that is already tilting the wrong way after Monday’s loss.
The keys are plain. Shead has to control the game again without carrying it alone. Poeltl has to win his minutes inside against Boston’s front line. And Toronto’s second unit has to survive the non Tatum minutes without giving the game away, the stretch that decided Monday night when Memphis held the Raptors scoreless for 4:44 of the fourth quarter. Tip off is 7 p.m. ET in Toronto, and by 9:30 the Raptors will know whether they are a .500 team passing through injuries, or a team that can beat the best in its conference while it waits to get whole.
There is also history leaning on the home side. Boston has won nine of the last ten meetings between these teams, a run Toronto’s current group inherited rather than built, and ending it would carry a weight beyond one night in the standings. The Raptors do not need to be the better team over a season to take this game. They need to be the better team for one loud Wednesday night in their own building, with Boston’s legs heavy and their own season asking for a signature win.
