The Celtics controlled all of the margins in their Game 2 win over the Pacers

For the first time all spring, the Boston Celtics have won a Game 2.

However, their comfortable 126-110 win over the Indiana Pacers wasn’t always shaping up to be that way.

Indiana started this game red hot, making a crisp 57.9% of their attempts from the field in the first quarter. For a little while there, it was feeling like we were all witnessing a second dose of the Miami Heat black magic voodoo from last year.

Despite the scorcher of a quarter from Indy, they only found themselves up two points.

Why?

Sometimes, you’re not going to be able to have the shot percentages happen in your favor — you’re just not. It takes a true display of character to win the margins when you can’t seem to catch a break, and that’s exactly what the Celtics did.

They simply controlled the things that they could control.

While the Pacers were electing to not miss, Boston decided to work hard. They ripped down six offensive rebounds and forced six turnovers in the opening frame.

That’s twelve extra opportunities that they gave themselves to put the ball in the basket.

The trend started early when multiple guys refused to give up ON THE OPENING POSSESSION.

Look at this.

In a similar way to how the New York Knicks created their best fourth-quarter offense because of offensive rebounds, the Cs fueled theirs on the glass to keep pace early.

The Cs wound up outshooting Indy 24-19 in the quarter, and it was a huge reason why they were in the position to catapult into the stratosphere in the second (at least for a little bit).

Boston kickstarted their big run in the same way that they’d started the game — with multiple offensive rebounds on the first possession of the quarter.

By halftime, the Celtics had themselves a lead (though it wasn’t quite what it once was) largely because of their extra effort. At this point, they were up to 10 total offensive boards and the same amount of forced turnovers.

The math says that’s 20 extra chances to score.

Once they got the lead in the second, they never gave it back. Again, things got a bit dicey before the half and when Pascal Siakam got going, but the Celtics continued to respond.

There’s also a lot to be said about the shots that the Celtics took in this game. The first half was an ugly one for Jayson Tatum. He shot 2-8 from the field and scored just four points. However, what he didn’t do was force bad looks. In fact, he did a tremendous job of reading the room and realizing how on fire Jaylen Brown was. Brown wound up with 40 points in the game, 24 of which came before the break.

Again, you can’t always control if the ball is finding the bottom of the net, but you can control whether or not you force shots when they’re not there.

For what it’s worth, JT was far better in the second half and was instrumental to Boston’s battle against Siakam in the third.

He tallied eight points on 4-6 from the field and again, didn’t settle. He put the ball on the floor and got to the paint for some easier looks.

There’s going to be a whole article on him tonight, but Oshae Brissett was also a big part of the team’s energy. I won’t dive too deep into it, but he gave them some good minutes off the bench and helped Boston’s defense lock in.

This was probably my favorite play of his tonight.

Is this a game that the Celtics would’ve lost if all of these things didn’t happen?

Probably not, but they did happen and plays like that happened a lot, and they happened because Boston decided that they were going to take control.