Welcome to a finals edition of the Athletic NBA show.

I'm your host, Dave Dufour, here with the athletics reporters on the ground covering the Celtics and the Mavericks,

Jared Weiss and Tim Cato, and we're here to recap the Celtics game two victory over the Mavericks

to take a two-0 series lead, 105-98, the Celtics defeat the Mavs in game two.

And Jared, we're going to start with you.

If game one was the Jalen Brown, Christopps Porzingis game. This was the Drew Holiday Derek White game.

Those guys contributed on both ends, but especially defense.

Listen, there were a lot of big plays, and the Celtics, they have these guys that make

these spectacular plays that you remember on defense.

But what made these, really these first two games special is the way that the Celtics

perimeter defenders have just controlled the shape of Dallas's offense.

And the reason why they won this game is that they kept Luca Donchich focused on scoring

and playmaking the way he wanted to,

and Donjers play really well,

and then nobody else played well from the perimeter.

And Dallas has not been able to get,

they haven't taken any corner threes.

Like the easiest shot,

Celtics have just taken that away.

And I think Dallas has had one corner three.

Okay.

So, yeah, it's, it's been, like this has been a series where Boston has dictated the way

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