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Celtics-Knicks: 56k | 300k
BOSTON, April 12 (Ticker) -- The last time the Boston Celtics were this much better than the New York Knicks, it was Larry Bird and Kevin McHale doing the damage. Now, it's Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce.

Walker scored 26 points and Pierce added 20 as the Celtics never trailed en route to a 107-92 victory over the Knicks that completed their first season series sweep in 11 years.

The Celtics won all four meetings with the Knicks this season, sweeping their long-time rivals for the first time since going 5-0 in the 1990-91 season.

"To beat them four times this season is great," Walker said. "It shows that we're starting to get confidence, starting to get in the swing of things ... and that's what you want to do. You want to dominate a team and this is a team we dominated and got all four wins against."

"(I'm) very happy," Celtics coach Jim O'Brien added. "They're a tough team to sweep. It's tough to sweep anybody in our conference. And this makes me very happy to be able to sweep the Knicks." This one never was close as Boston scored the first nine points, built a 65-43 halftime lead and led by 37 points midway through the third quarter.

Boston (47-33) won for the sixth time in seven games, strengthened its hold on the third seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs and still can catch Detroit (47-32) for the second-best record.

"Right now, we know how important it is to have some sort of momentum going into the playoffs and right now, we're trying to build that momentum," Walker said. "We've got to go out and win these next two," added forward Rodney Rogers, who scored 18 points. "We don't just want to go out and (fool) around and just say `Hey, we in the playoffs.' We want to keep winning and take that momentum with us." Latrell Sprewell scored 21 points and Shandon Anderson and Othella Harrington added 17 apiece for the Knicks (29-50), who have dropped four in a row to reach 50 losses for the first time since the 1986-87 season.

"I kind of got on guys and I usually don't say much," Sprewell said. "In the third quarter, we were down (37) points and I'm like, `At least compete.' We weren't competing."

The lack of competition was evident from the outset as Boston scored the first nine points. Pierce had 11 points as the Celtics bolted to a 32-17 lead after one quarter. Walker and Rogers had eight apiece in the second quarter as the lead ballooned to 65-43 at halftime. Boston opened the third period with a 20-5 run capped by two jumpers from Rogers, opening its largest lead at 85-48 with 5:10 remaining.

"We were cruising out there," Knicks coach Don Chaney said. "You can't cruise against a great team. They've got a lot of great 1-on-1 players. You've got to defend." O'Brien emptied his bench late in the third quarter but had to come back with some of his starters in the final period as the Knicks began to play harder. However, New York got no closer than 12 points.

"I thought we sort of lost our heads at the end of the fourth quarter, lost our focus, but we did enough to win the game," Pierce said.

Walker swept 12 rebounds and Pierce had season highs of eight assists and seven steals for the Celtics, who shot 52 percent (33-of-64), including 12-of-25 from the arc.

The Knicks shot 42 percent (34-of-81) and were beaten on the boards, 45-37.