It wasn’t a matter of playing hard because the Raptors certainly did that to end a long grind of a road trip in Boston on Thursday.
It’s just that they didn’t play effectively enough.
A handful of missed shots right at the rim, a couple of step-slow defensive breakdowns and an empty gas tank down the stretch conspired to cost them a 120-106 loss to the Celtics at the TD Garden.
It ended a 4-2 road trip for Toronto, which can’t be considered bad given they didn’t have OG Anunoby for any of the six games and didn’t have Kyle Lowry for almost a complete one because of back spasms.