There’s no way to accurately describe what went down between the Celtics and Knicks in Game 2 of their first round playoff series. No metaphor that sums it all up, no overriding thought process to a game that saw Rajon Rondo take 23 shots, Carmelo Anthony channel Bernard King circa 1984 and Kevin Garnett win a playoff game with an unbelievably tough shot in the post, which has only been the one thing people said he couldn’t do on a basketball court. And those were just the highlights. 

The Celtics won a game when they allowed 20 offensive rebounds against a team that played without any interior presence. They beat a Knicks team by three points that was without Chauncey Billups and for all intents and purposes, Amar’e Stoudemire whose bad back allowed him to score only four points in 17 excruciating minutes. They beat a team that had Bill Walker, Jared Jeffries, Shawne Williams and Toney Douglas playing heavy fourth quarter minutes.

“So listen, I’m extremely happy,” said Doc Rivers who looked anything but pleased. He then added, “I think you can tell that.”

The Celtics have a 2-0 lead on the Knicks after their 96-93 victory in Game 2 (click here for a recap) and for that they are happy. For everything else they are concerned.

The bench didn’t come to play again. The Celtics couldn’t hold a first or fourth quarter lead. Their offense lived and died too often with Rondo attacking the basket in transition. And Carmelo -- good lord, Carmelo – forced them to do the one thing they absolutely hate to do defensively: run double teams at an otherwise unstoppable force.

“It was really good to get the win but we’re disappointed with the way we played tonight,” Paul Pierce said. “We gave up a big lead and thought we should have pushed the lead. We shouldn’t be satisfied with the way we played tonight. We’ve got a lot of things to clean up. Hopefully we can play better when we get to New York.”

The Celtics and Knicks have played five times this season (you can throw out the regular season finale). Each one has decided by 10 points or less and three have come down to a final possession. There’s one other common thread that runs through this brutal test of wills: The Celtics have won every time.

Whether it was Paul Pierce’s dagger back in December, Ray Allen’s 3-pointer in Game 1 or Garnett’s gut-check move on the low post at the end of Game 2, the Celtics have always made the final play. Yet strangely, that doesn’t seem to provide any extra swagger or confidence in this series. 

“Our whole team needs to obviously assess each other’s play,” Garnett said. “I think we need to assess it from a personal [level]. I think all of us need to play better. I think we have the ability to play better.”

If there’s any one extra ingredient in this series – and this is no knock on Knicks’ coach Mike D’Antoni who has found a way to compete without his key players – it’s Rivers on the sidelines, clipboard in hand with the game on the line.

His calls in Game 1 were masterful. The Garnett play was simply a great read by Rondo, who saw the Knicks denying Pierce and went to the secondary option in the post. But Rivers pulled out a gem on an inbounds play with 4.1 seconds left and the Celtics holding a one-point lead.

First he subbed Delonte West for Glen Davis and then with everyone in blue waiting for the pass to come to Allen or Pierce, West cut backcourt and ran the clock down to six-tenths of a second before being fouled and making two free throws.

“I couldn’t get out there,” Anthony said. “I think Doc Rivers drew up a hell of a play though, man. You’ve got to take your hat off to Doc for drawing up a hell of a play like that.”

If nothing else, Rivers is solidifying his reputation as one of the best in-game strategists of his coaching generation.

"In walkthrough, we go through end-of-game situations every day," Allen said. "Some plays we use, some we don’t, but Doc likes to see the timing of it with the second team guarding us – seeing what’s open and what looks fluid. He’ll throw it in just to see it, just to feel it, and then at the end of the game, voila, you’re sitting there, and you’re running it."

There were a handful of brutal coaching decisions for Rivers to make in this game. Anthony’s brilliance forced the double-team issue and also caused him to decide to use Pierce on him exclusively.

“We needed Paul to match minutes,” Rivers said, which left Pierce playing 45 minutes in the untenable position of trying to stop one of the great isolation players – maybe the greatest in the league -- on a night when Anthony was on a different planet.

He also decided to stick with Glen Davis down the stretch instead of going to Jermaine O’Neal who might have been able to do something about all those rebounds. “It was a tough call,” Rivers said. “And we won the game. I don’t know if I made the right call or not honestly. The debate on the bench would have been terrific for you guys to hear but we turned the mics off so you couldn’t.”

In the end this is what this series has become. Brilliant players making brilliant plays, coaching decisions that hinge on gut-feel and no small amount of angst even when it turns out well. This may wind up being the most agonizing five-game first round playoff series any of us will ever see, which is both exhilarating and also a problem for a team that has designs on going deep into the playoffs.

The Knicks? The Knicks are as free and easy as any team without two of its three best players and trailing 2-0 you can find. “It was fun, for the most part,” Anthony said. “We were out there fighting man.”

The Celtics, meanwhile, are fighting themselves as much as anything. They can’t continue on with Rondo, Pierce and Allen playing upwards of 40+ minutes a night. The big four have scored 147 of their 183 points, grabbed more than half their rebounds and had a hand in three quarters of the assists. Help will have to come from somewhere – paging Jeff Green and Nenad Krstic – if not in this series than at some point down the road.

They head to New York with a hefty advantage, but they have been left almost dazed by what has transpired in those two games. “It’s crazy man,” Garnett said. “I barely remember anything about tonight.”

There are less than 72 hours before it starts all over again and if the Celtics come back to Boston with anything less than a 3-1 lead, this will get truly epic.