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BOSTON - Paul Pierce and Ray Allen found their shooting touch. LeBron James can only hope he left his in Cleveland.

Pierce scored 19 points, Kevin Garnett added 13 with 12 rebounds, and Allen broke out of a seven-quarter scoring drought with 16 points to help the Boston Celtics beat the Cavaliers 89-73 on Thursday night and take a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference semifinals.

One game after going 2-for-18 from the field and missing his last six shots, including a layup to tie the game with 8.5 seconds left, James missed his first three tries and finished with 21 points on 6-for-24 shooting.

This time it was contagious: The Cavaliers shot 35.6 per cent in the game, hitting just 11.8 per cent in the second quarter as Boston turned an eight-point deficit into a nine-point lead.

Game 3 is Saturday night in Cleveland. The Cavaliers will need their crowd to pull them out of their funk because the Celtics are 6-0 in the playoffs in Boston, and they would have the homecourt advantage through the NBA finals.

Meanwhile, maybe Cleveland fans can hope for cheap gas if an oil company insults all-star LeBron James.

Lines were so long Thursday at some of the 86 Papa John's stores offering a large, one-topping pizza for 23 cents that police stood nearby to make sure people didn't get unruly.

The Louisville, Ky.-based company agreed to the offer after a franchisee in Washington, D.C., made T-shirts calling star LeBron James a "crybaby." The shirts referred to James' complaints about hard fouls during a playoff series that the Washington Wizards lost to the Cavaliers.

The 23-cent price of a pizza is a homage to James' jersey number.

There were a few headaches, mostly complaints about long waits and line-cutting.

In University Heights, an auxiliary police officer tried to settle a line-cutting complaint without riling either side.

Each Papa John's location offering the deal in the Cleveland, Columbus, Toledo and Youngstown areas was prepared to sell more than 900 pies. Outlets were ordered to close early if, as expected, they ran out of pizzas.

In suburban Cleveland, people stood wrapped in blankets outside a store in Westlake and the line was two blocks long in University Heights.

"I did it for the principle of it. The principle of it is he's not a crybaby and Papa John's should not have gotten into it," Jennie Moore, 54, of University Heights, said as she waited for a pepperoni pizza.