Silent.

"Swissssh."

"Get off me."

The MSG crowd was raucous and rowdy at the beginning of the night. By the end of it, they were silent.
Spike Lee even left early. It was that bad. Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and the rest of the Boston Celtics were the reason why. Behind the Captain's 38 and Ray's 32, the Celtics convincingly beat the Knicks 113-96 in
NYC tonight. Knicks fans will probably say their team is "banged-up" or that they didn't play "hardenough", but it's hard to deny the C's offensive effort and more importantly, the way they turned things around on the glass tonight.

Pierce had a look of determination in his eye from the jump. Watching on tv as he came out on the floor, he just had a menacing look like he was not going to be denied tonight. And sure enough, he wasn't. With his 38 points, he passed Kobe Bryant as the active-player with the most 30+ point performances at MSG with 8. Ray Allen dropped in 32 points of his own, including 8 of 11 from downtown. He was absolutely unstoppable once he got going. And of course we cannot forget about Rondo. Rajon had easily his best playoff game of 2011 thus far, notching a triple-double of 15 pts, 11 boards and an incredible 20 assists-which tied a Celtics playoff record. Jermaine O'Neal continued to silence his skeptics by playing another solid game. He had 3 blocks, 2 assists, 6 points and 3 boards in 27 minutes. This from a guy who many, including myself, did not think would be healthy enough to play at all this postseason.

 The only concern this evening was the C's bench-they continued to struggle and looked lost at times. However I am confident that together with Doc and their teammates they will tighten things up. The Celtics now will look to sweep the Knicks on Sunday, my birthday, at Madison Square Garden. What a great present that would be! Tip-off is at 3:30pm. Check out Chuck's recap at Red's Army.com for more, including a link to the complete box score.