BOSTON — For a team chasing an NBA championship, getting Jayson Tatum back at full strength is a big deal. 

The Boston Celtics haven’t needed their five-time All-NBA wing to give the Toronto Raptors the business, mind you. Boston was 3-0 before Sunday afternoon’s game at TD Garden, with none of the results ever really in doubt. 

But Tatum’s return to All-NBA form after missing the first 62 games of the season recovering from a torn Achilles tendon suffered last May could very well be the finishing piece Boston needs to return to championship form.

It’s not even clear they needed him against Toronto on Sunday, as the Celtics dusted the Raptors in the fourth quarter to coast home with the 115-101 win. 

Tatum was merely a ‘nice-to-have’ when the best big man on the court was the Celtics' Neemias Queta. A Portuguese centre who was a former second-round pick and spent three seasons on two-way deals before signing a team-friendly three-year deal for $7.2 million. He scored 18 points on 10 shots, mostly on a mixture of putbacks (thanks to five offensive rebounds) and unimpeded rolls to the rim. These things happen, but considering that Raptors head coach Darko Rajaković eventually had to adjust his rotation so that he could match up rookie Collin Murray-Boyles with Queta instead of Jakob Poeltl — who signed a three-year, $84 million extension last summer — you can kind of glean that the Raptors have bigger problems than how to match up with Tatum and Jaylen Brown. But that didn’t go all that well either. Throw in Payton Pritchard, back in his super-sixth man role with Tatum healthy again, and the trio combined for 66 points on 53 per cent shooting, with Tatum adding 13 rebounds and seven assists. 

The Raptors' core three players? They weren’t nearly as good. Scottie Barnes, Brandon Ingram and RJ Barrett combined to shoot 16-of-43 from the floor (37 per cent) while committing nine turnovers. Once again, the difference in the game was the fourth quarter — a theme all season. The Raptors were trailing by three going into the third, coughed up a couple of live-ball turnovers, lost track of Pritchard for a three and a lay-up, and the lead was back up to 12 in the blink of an eye. The Raptors had cut the lead to seven with 4:53 left on a pair of buckets by Brandon Ingram, but a Queta putback dunk, a Pritchard steal and a Derrick White three sparked a 15-4 run that sealed it for Boston. 

“I think we needed to come out with more urgency,” said Ja’Kobe Walter, who, together with Collin Murray-Boyles, were the Raptors' bright spots. Walter finished with 16 points, was 4-of-5 from three and had two steals; one each on Tatum and Brown, who combined for 10 of Boston’s 18........

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