The Toronto Raptors head to New England on Easter Sunday to face the second seed in the Eastern Conference, the Boston Celtics. With just five games remaining in the regular season, the Raptors have work to do to stay in the top six seeds and avoid the Play-In Tournament. 

After the Philadelphia 76ers lost their matchup with the Detroit Pistons last night, Toronto holds a 0.5-game lead for the sixth seed, but if they lose today in Boston, the Raptors will fall right back to seventh because of Philadelphia owning the tiebreaker. The road after Boston doesn’t get much easier, as the Raptors will have to face the Miami Heat twice and the New York Knicks in four days. 

Injuries have not been kind to the Raptors this season. RJ Barrett, Jakob Poeltl, and Collin Murray-Boyles have missed a combined 94 games this season, with the injuries all occurring at different times. Starting point guard Immanuel Quickley is the newest member of the group, having missed the last seven games due to plantar fasciitis in his right foot. 

Heading into the matchup with the Celtics, the official NBA injury report shows good news for everyone outside the sixth-year point guard.

Quickley will miss his eighth-straight game on Sunday due to the plantar fasciitis issue. He is only joined by Chucky Hepburn on the injury report, who is out due to right knee surgery. 

The Celtics have been one of the best teams all season, even without six-time All-Star Jayson Tatum. Now that he is back in the lineup next to MVP candidate Jaylen Brown, the Celtics are a force to be reckoned with and may be the favorite to come out of a wide-open Eastern Conference.

They consistently beat teams with their blistering defense and relentless three-point shooting. First in the NBA in opposing points per game (107.1), the Celtics are adept at clogging the passing lanes and packing the paint, forcing teams to outshoot them from distance. This can be shown by their ranking in the NBA in opposing points in the paint (first) and opposing assists (fourth) per game. 

Another strength for Boston is the lack of turning the ball over. The Celtics are not a team that thrives on ball movement (29th in assists per game), but their ball security (first in turnovers per game) and defensive energy (fifth in opposing fastbreak points) often lead to success. They blitz teams with their first-half scoring and rely on the defense to lead them to wins, and that will be the plan to dominate the Raptors in the TD Garden. 

This should be an excellent matchup because of the teams’ counteracting strengths. Toronto ranks eighth in opposing three-point percentage (35.3%) and top five in fastbreak points (first), points in the paint (fifth), and assists (second) per game. It will be interesting to see which team is able to bend without breaking when it comes to paint scoring and transition offense. 

Simply put, the Raptors are going to need to have a great night shooting the ball, something they have been poor at all season (23rd in three-point percentage). Limiting Brown and Tatum will be a strength for Toronto due to the defensive stardom of Scottie Barnes and Collin Murray-Boyles, but finding offense may be a problem. 

Boston defends the pick-and-roll very well, and without Quickley running the show, Poeltl’s offensive production may be limited to late passes from drives or second-chance points from offensive rebounds. Isolation from Ingram and Barrett won’t work well against this defense, so they need to move the ball as much as possible to get open looks from the outside. 

The X-Factor for this game may be second-year guard Ja’Kobe Walter, who has proven to be the team’s best three-point shooter as of late. Expect him to get lots of looks and see a great chunk of minutes if the Raptors can keep the game close in the first half.