Toronto @ Boston preview

Last Meeting ( Feb 24, 2017 ) Boston 97, Toronto 107

Even when their leading scorer heads to the locker room early, the Boston Celtics can still lean on their league-best defense to keep their winning streak alive. The Celtics hope to have Kyrie Irving back at the head of that defense when they try to push their winning streak to 12 straight on Saturday against the visiting Toronto Raptors.

Irving was bashed in the face by an elbow from teammate Aron Baynes, who was turning to box out after committing a foul on defense, and was sent home at halftime on Friday and will be monitored despite not being diagnosed with a concussion during initial testing. "I haven't talked to him," Boston coach Brad Stevens told reporters of Irving after his short-handed team pulled off a 90-87 win over the Charlotte Hornets to run the NBA's longest winning streak to 11 straight. "But he sent a text to a group of us right when we walked back into the coaches' office and it said, 'Way to go. Great win' ... So obviously he watched the end of the game." The Celtics are allowing a league-low 94 points per game but will be tested by a Toronto squad that averaged 120.5 points in back-to-back home wins. "The game is changing," Raptors coach Dwane Casey told reporters after watching his team outlast the New Orleans Pelicans in a 122-118 win on Thursday. "It's 3-pointers. It's a scoring game. You've got to be able to score, but also you have to have some semblance of defense and we didn't."

TV: 3:30 p.m. ET, Sportsnet ONE (Toronto), NBCS Boston

ABOUT THE RAPTORS (7-4): Most of Toronto's scoring is coming from star shooting guard DeMar DeRozan, who led the way with 33 points on Thursday and is averaging 30 over the last four contests to boost his season mark to 24.7. DeRozan is embracing the way Casey wants to open the offense this season and is averaging 2.6 3-point attempts while starting to hit them with some regularity -- 4-of-8 from 3-point range in the last two games. Fellow All-Star Kyle Lowry has never been shy about hoisting the ball up from beyond the arc and is averaging 6.3 3-point attempts but is shooting just 33.3 percent from beyond the arc, his lowest mark since the 2009-10 campaign.

ABOUT THE CELTICS (11-2): Boston trailed by as many as 18 points on Friday and was playing without center Al Horford (concussion) in addition to Irving and Gordon Hayward (ankle), but an inexperienced group held the Hornets to 4-of-20 from the field in the fourth quarter to pull off an improbable win. "I remember during a timeout and Coach had said, 'We're going to win this game and this place is going to go crazy," point guard Terry Rozier told ESPN. "We were definitely down. We were down probably like 15. (Stevens) knew that we were going to win the game and the crowd was going to feed into it. It was going to be crazy, and that's exactly what happened." Shane Larkin came off the bench when Irving went down and finished with 16 points in 17 minutes to earn himself a larger role if Irving has to miss more time.

BUZZER BEATERS

1. Celtics G Marcus Smart is shooting 29.1 percent from the floor on the season and is 6-of-27 over the last two games.

2. Raptors C Jonas Valanciunas grabbed double-digit rebounds in each of the last two games after failing to hit double figures in his previous four outings.

3. Toronto took three of the four meetings last season and six of the last eight in the series.

PREDICTION: Celtics 103, Raptors 99