And what tells you much about what ails Toronto's NBA squad is that the only people in the gym who didn't react appropriately were Bosh's teammates.

The refs got it right, assessing Pierce a technical foul. Toronto's coaches, stomping the sideline in outrage, were suitably fuming. And the Celtics reserves, sensing escalation, bolted from their bench.

But the rank-and-file Raptors , other than those checking on Bosh's condition, watched the whole thing like couch potatoes. No surprise, then, that they also got beat soundly by a better, tougher team, 116-103.

"There's no other way to say it: We just got punked," said Antoine Wright, Toronto's veteran swingman, a rare voice of outrage on a ho-hum club.

"We've got guys standing over our best player, flexing, and it's not something we can stand for. I was pretty frustrated sitting on the bench watching their whole team run out there on the floor and we only had our coaches up shouting and screaming at their players. I don't like that."

Said Bosh: "Yeah, I'd like to see the team more passionate. I look at their bench and they're all up standing at half-court, and nobody from their team was down on the floor. I think we would react better to just be out there for one another and just stay together."

Wright and Bosh were on something of an island, it seemed. Jay Triano, the Toronto coach, didn't register a qualm with his team's reaction to Pierce's technical; he said he "liked the way we fought back after that" - although the Raptors , down 17 points at the time, never got the Boston advantage below nine points.

Guard Jarrett Jack, who bent down to check on Bosh, pointed out that the play was clean, and that the Raptors had come to Bosh's aid when Bosh tangled with Dwight Howard in a game against Orlando earlier this season.

Nobody was suggesting the Raptors should have brawled. But there's no denying that Pierce's dunk-and-pose was symbolic of Boston's second-half manhandling of the soft visitors.

The Raptors led 55-54 at the half, but the Celtics' defence held Toronto scoreless for nearly seven minutes of a game-turning third-quarter stretch, converting a four-point Raptors lead into an eight-point home advantage. By night's end the Celtics had scored 68 points in the paint to Toronto's 48 while inducing the jump-shooting, play-forcing Raptors into 25 turnovers. The Celtics flipped a switch. The Raptors didn't respond, either to Pierce's taunt or to the cranked intensity.

Wright, speaking to reporters before the game, criticized unnamed teammates for lax preparation in the wake of Wednesday's 35-point loss in Charlotte: "You've got guys in here eating popcorn, joking around before the game. And we go out there and lose by 40. It's a direct result of what's going on before the game. Guys not coming in with the right mind frame."

Those words appeared to resonate. Said Sonny Weems, the 23-year-old wing player: "We do fool around a lot. And it tends to carry over into the game, and that's something that needs to change."

You'll excuse Bosh, the seventh-year Raptor who has heard similar vows of vigilance before, if he exhaled through the post-game questions.

Said Wright: "We've got a lot of good players on this team but we're going to have to come together or teams are just going to continue to run us over like this."

Sighed Bosh: "I'm tired of talking about toughness. We talk about it too much. We talk about everything too much.

"We've got to stop talking about it and just do it."