Celtics rally for win vs. Raptors to close out 4-0 road trip

Emotionally charged win 24 hours earlier?

Early-morning arrival north of the border?

Key player unavailable?

Twenty-plus-point first-half deficit?

None of that fazed the Celtics on Wednesday.

One day after routing Jaylen Brown’s Philadelphia 76ers in a matchup that had been circled since August, Boston avoided a letdown against the hard-nosed Toronto Raptors, gutting out a 98-93 win at Scotiabank Arena.

Jayson Tatum navigated a tough shooting night (6 for 21) to lead the C’s with 24 points, eight assists, seven rebounds and two blocks. His ninth and 10th free throws of the game put Boston ahead for good in the final minute, with Sam Hauser and Neemias Queta foiling the final two Raptors possessions to seal the win.

Queta had 11 points, 13 rebounds and three blocks and was a plus-27 in one of his most productive outings of the season. Derrick White rejected four shots, dished out seven assists and scored 19 points. He, Tatum and Baylor Scheierman (nine points, seven rebounds, three assists, two steals, one block) spearheaded a Celtics rally that erased a 22-point Toronto lead.

The win capped a 4-0 road trip for the Celtics, who were playing without starting wing Paul George (illness). The Eastern Conference leaders have won five straight to improve to 10-2 on the season.

Boston have the next three days off — its longest scheduled break between games until All-Star weekend in mid-February — before returning to TD Garden on Sunday for a juicy matchup against Cooper Flagg, Kyrie Irving and the Dallas Mavericks (6 p.m.).

Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla again spun the dial with his starting lineup, inserting Luka Garza and Scheierman alongside White, Tatum and Queta in a new double-big look.

Garza, typically Boston’s third-string center, became the 11th Celtic to start a game this season. The only three rostered players who have yet to do so: Payton Pritchard, Ron Harper Jr. and rookie Chris Cenac Jr. Only White has started all 12 games.

The Raptors were missing All-Stars Kawhi Leonard (knee) and Scottie Barnes (groin), but they set the pace early, shooting an eye-popping 10 for 18 from three in the first quarter while forcing five Celtics turnovers and committing zero.

Aggressive defense is a core part of Toronto’s identity — Darko Rajakovic’s squad entered Wednesday ranked first in the NBA in steals per game and second in points off turnovers — but the Raptors typically aren’t that efficient from beyond the arc. They came in shooting 31.8% from deep and averaging 11.2 makes per game, which both ranked 27th in the league.

Toronto led 38-29 after one, then ripped off a 10-0 run early in the second quarter that made it 48-32.

Without George, whose stellar outing Tuesday included 13 points in the second quarter and 14 more in the fourth, the Celtics struggled to generate offense with Tatum off the floor. Tatum sat the first 4 1/2 minutes of the second, and Boston scored just six points during that stretch, on a pair of Pritchard 3-pointers.

Free throws by Jamison Battle, Collin Murray-Boyles and Jamal Shead stretched the Raptors’ lead to 22 points, the largest the Celtics have faced in any game this season.

It would have been natural for the Celtics to check out that situation, accept a scheduled loss and pack it in before their three-day break. But they rallied.

Tatum proceeded to score the next 11 points to power a 16-0 Celtics run. He started it with a pull-up 3-pointer, made two free throws after drawing a second-chance foul, threw down a give-and-go dunk and then capitalized on a Murray-Boyles flagrant foul to engineer a seven-point play. After the second-year Raptors forward was whistled for a dangerous closeout on a made Tatum 3, Tatum sank his free throw and found Baylor Scheierman for another triple on the ensuing possession.

Scheierman also grabbed an offensive rebound and drew a charge during the run. White notched a block that sprung Tatum for his transition dunk and a steal that initiated a perfectly executed 3-on-1 fast break. White fed the ball up the court to Tatum, who flipped a behind-the-back pass to Scheierman, who dished it back to the trailing White for a layup.

Jakob Poeltl ended Toronto’s drought with a midrange jumper, and White was called for a three-shot foul against Immanuel Quickley on the ensuing possession. But the Celtics successfully challenged the call, which was overturned to another White block.

By halftime, the Celtics had cut their deficit to seven, 61-54. Two midrange jumpers by White and a deep Scheierman 3 made it a two-point game early in the third quarter. A Jordan Walsh layup, after a dubious drawn charge by Queta, pulled Boston ahead, 66-65.

The Raptors missed 11 consecutive 3-pointers while their lead dwindled, then vanished. But they hit three of their final four attempts in the third quarter — all by bench players — to take an 80-75 advantage into the fourth.

Despite another spate of turnovers — four of them in the first four minutes of the fourth quarter — and some issues on the defensive glass, the Celtics held serve in their final stretch of non-Tatum minutes. They trailed 86-83 when Tatum reentered after a stepback White 3.

Boston retook the lead on a Tatum turnaround jumper with 1:55 remaining. Fellow Duke product R.J. Barrett responded with back-to-back baskets, the second a fast-break dunk off a Shead steal. Queta punched back with a slam of his own, and Shead couldn’t convert an open 3 that would have put Toronto up four.