Thanks to The Hey, I got to go to my first NBA playoff game last night. He managed to get a couple of tickets up in the balcony ($12! How can you beat that?)

I'm not going to do a recap of the game, except to say that the Celtics dominated Atlanta the way they should have all throughout this series. Smothering defense and good offense (six players in double figures) led to a 110-85 win for the Green.

We met at a cool sports pub on Portland St. near the Gahden called Porters. Good food (I had the Cubano sandwich), cold beer (Sam lager for me, but a good selection of others on tap) and a great pregame atmosphere made it a fun choice. I really liked that it's not as crazy as some of the better known places like The Fours..

After dinner we headed over to the Garden. Reebok was kind enough to hand out free Celtics T-shirts, which was a nice bonus. We headed to our seats and you could just feel the electric atmosphere in the building. After the two losses in Atlanta, you could tell the crowd was ready to get behind the Celtics. The fans were loud, excited and all over the Hawks, especially Mike Bibby. Every time Bibby touched the ball he was booed.

Things did go a bit over the top from time to time. The biggest one, I thought, was when the Hawks Al Horford was poked in the eye late in the game. As Horford tried to recover, the crowd chanted "You're a pussy".

Of course, Horford saw fit to taunt Paul Pierce earlier in the series so you reap what you sow.

The one drawback was the late start of last night's game. It didn't actually start until about 8:45 (Thanks, TNT!) That meant that it didn't end until after 11, and by the time I took the T back to Woodland station and drove home, it was about 12:30 in the morning. Fortunately, we had R's parent-teacher conference this morning, so I was able to get away with sleeping until 7 instead of 5:30 AM. I was still dragging a bit today, but it was well worth it.

Game 6 is tomorrow night back in Atlanta. Let's hope the Celtics can end this thing and move on to the next round. We have already let the Hawks hang around too long.