The first Boston Celtics basketball since the Jaylen Brown trade ended with a made corner three and an overtime win. Boston beat the Toronto Raptors 83-80 on Friday in its Las Vegas Summer League opener, after Chris Cenac Jr. erased a three-point deficit with 0.8 seconds left in regulation.
The banner-relevant news came from the 2025 draft class. Hugo Gonzalez, the No. 28 pick a year ago, flirted with a triple-double: 17 points, 10 rebounds and eight assists. Amari Williams posted a game-high 23 points and 13 rebounds, and John Tonje added 20 points, five rebounds and three steals. Cenac finished with 14 off the bench on top of the shot that saved the game.
It was not clean. Both offenses labored through the first half and Toronto led 34-26 at the break before Boston pushed back with a 28-20 third quarter. The fourth turned into a possession-by-possession fight — 12 lead changes in regulation, eight of them in the final period — until Cenac’s corner three sent it to the extra frame.
Toronto’s own first-round pick made his case in the loss: Allen Graves had 22 points and 13 rebounds, and Chucky Hepburn added 11 points and five assists.
The front-office read here is simple. Boston spent the spring trading its best player for Paul George, picks and flexibility, and the July question is whether the young wing depth is real enough to keep the retool short. One summer game answers nothing, but Gonzalez running the offense at 17-10-8 and Williams controlling the glass is precisely the evidence the basketball operations staff came to Vegas to collect. Boston plays the Charlotte Hornets on Sunday at 5 p.m. ET.
For fantasy, this is deep-league and dynasty territory. Gonzalez is the name to file — a second-year wing showing lead-guard passing chops in a wide-open post-Brown rotation — while Williams’s rebounding gives him a plausible path to backup-center minutes behind Boston’s veteran bigs. Tonje is a scoring flier for dynasty rosters only.
