BOSTON -- The TD Garden crowd was amped from the opening tip in the Celtics’ first capacity crowd in nearly 20 months. However, those raucous cheers turned to boos by the second half as the hosts were embarrassed by the Toronto Raptors in Ime Udoka’s home debut, being outscored by 30 points in the game’s final 18 minutes in a 115-83 defeat.
Toronto dominated all effort facets of the game with 21 offensive rebounds, 16 steals and a 58-32 edge on points in the paint. A constant stream of defensive breakdowns and empty offensive possessions drew a strong response from Ime Udoka in the aftermath of the defeat.
“I said that’s as ugly as it can get,” Udoka said on addressing his team after the game. “One thing I can’t stand as a coach is to get punked out there, and I felt they came out and punked us, outplayed us, played harder than us, all the things we talked about. You don’t want to overreact and panic. We’re going to stay together and keep our head up. But I said use these boos as motivation. We deserved it, the way we played.”
A majority of the Celtics roster looked particularly flat at times in the wake of a double overtime loss to the Knicks on Wednesday night that led to career-high minutes for several members of the starting five. However, with the additions of a healthy Al Horford and Josh Richardson back into the lineup, Udoka did not view that as an excuse for the lackluster effort.
We got some guys back, and honestly it looked like we could have been tired from the double overtime game, but no excuse, you have to play through it,” Udoka declared. “We had a day of rest yesterday, and New York went on to beat Orlando, so no excuse on our part.”
Horford pointed to the questionable effort at points throughout the night as something that will be taken care of ahead of the team’s matchup against the Rockets on Sunday night as the team searches for its first win.
“Unacceptable giving up all those offensive rebounds,” Horford said. “You just can’t do that. We put ourselves in a bad position. I think they shot like 20 more shots at halftime. It was something ridiculous, and we were still down by 4. And then we continued, stayed at it, but we could never get over. They make you play different. You have to move the ball more. You have to do certain things. I don’t think we did enough of that. So I just think that got to us and it just kind of deflated us on defense. But give them credit. They’re a scrappy team and they play hard. We were definitely kept in check tonight.”
The road does not get easier for the Celtics from here as they face their first road back-to-back on the season against a Rockets team coming off a blowout win on Friday night before facing a 2-0 Hornets team on Monday in Charlotte.
“Us coaches didn’t prepare them as well as we should have, understanding who Toronto is,” Udoka said. “Doesn’t matter who they have on their team, on their roster, they are going to play with that same intensity and we didn’t match it. Take it in, use it for fuel, use it for motivation to come back ready for Houston in two days.”
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