Celtics were all about pressure in Game 2

In 1990s England when the rave scene was at its most prominent, a punk-rave group emerged to take the country by storm. In one of their more famous tracks called Breathe, the lyrics to the opening two lines of the chorus go like this:

“Breathe the pressure.
Come play my game, I’ll test ya.”

As a quick aside, I’ve chosen this video because I was in the crowd, not because they’re playing the song in question (which they’re not).

What does this have to do with basketball? Well, when watching the Boston Celtics go to work against the Atlanta Hawks in Game 2 of their playoff battle on Tuesday night, I was reminded of those lyrics by The Prodigy as Boston forced their will onto Atlanta’s timid interior defense.

The numbers back up what the eye test was showing, too. The Celtics took 38% of their shots within four feet of the basket, converting 74.2% of them, per Cleaning The Glass. In a game where the Celtics dropped 118 points, 66 of them came from two-point range, with only Sam Hauser and Luke Kornet failing to register any buckets from inside the arc.