TORONTO – There was a collective sense of relief Friday morning inside the visitor’s locker room at Air Canada Centre.

Its occupants – the Boston Celtics – had gone through a whirlwind of emotions over the last few days as trade rumors swirled with the nearing of the trade deadline.

Alas, the deadline passed Thursday at 3 p.m. and the C’s made no moves. And the players were perfectly fine with that decision.

“I have trust in (president of basketball operations) Danny Ainge and all the guys in the front office,” Isaiah Thomas said Friday ahead of shootaround before taking on the Toronto Raptors. “That’s what they do on a daily basis so they know if they had a good deal or they didn’t.

“Since I’ve been here we haven’t had a trade so it’s not a surprise. We’ll just roll with the punches and go with what we’ve got in this locker room.”

The Celtics entered the All-Star break last weekend knowing that they may return to a much different looking roster. All pieces remained intact, however, which was comforting to the players.

“It’s nice to see that everybody’s here,” said Avery Bradley, Boston’s longest tenured player. “I’m happy that no one was traded. I think we have a great group of guys that are playing great basketball. And I hope we can continue to play that way because I feel like this could be a special year for us if we all buy into what we’re trying to do as a team.”

Boston’s recent success may be one reason why the front office felt comfortable standing pat at the deadline. The Celtics won nine of 11 games entering the All-Star break and are just three and a half games behind the first-place Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference standings.

Ainge said Thursday that he has great faith in Boston’s current core and is excited to see what it will be capable of accomplishing come playoff time.

“That should motivate everyone to want to work hard and focus on the group of guys that we have and have everyone buy into what we want to do,” Bradley said response to Ainge’s words of confidence. “I’m not saying that everyone hasn’t (bought in), but we just (have to) really focus on execution and playing as hard as we can so we can make a push and prepare for the Playoffs.”

Ainge also noted that the team has the potential to grow even more from now until the postseason.

“We haven’t seen the best of this team,” he said, referencing the fact that Boston hasn’t been at full strength for the majority of the season.

Isaiah Thomas agreed, “We’ve had a healthy squad for probably only seven to 10 games where everybody is healthy and playing. So we don’t know what we’re capable of doing with a fully healthy squad. But we’re second in the East right now and we’ve been playing really well.”

Boston is almost back to full strength, meaning they could begin to perform even better than they did through the first two thirds of the season.

Jaylen Brown will return tonight from a hip flexor injury that sidelined him for three games ahead of the All-Star break.

Avery Bradley, who has been out since early January with an Achilles injury, could also return any day to the rotation.

“We need him,” Thomas said of Bradley. “He’s the second-leading scorer on our team, the best on-ball defender in the NBA and somebody that can also knock down shots. So we definitely need him and we’re waiting for him to come back.”

When the Celtics return to full strength, Thomas expects nothing but the best out of his teammates.

“We got an opportunity to finish high in the Eastern Conference,” he said. “We gotta take it day by day and at the end of the day it’s about winning, nothing else. We need to be the best team we can possibly be.”

The next step toward that goal begins tonight, as the Celtics begin the final stretch of the regular season against their Atlantic Division rival in Toronto.