The Truth hurts

The Truth hurts


Celtics captain Paul Pierce is congratulated by teammates James Posey and Kevin Garnett during Sunday night’s 28-point performance against the Lakers in Game 2 of the NBA Finals.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>They scoffed at his pain and accused him of acting in Game 1, and now that he has led his team to a 2-0 lead in the NBA Finals, Paul Pierce [stats] might as well come clean. He is acting. He’s acting like Kobe Bryant. He’s playing the role of best player on the floor in this championship series, the superstar who simply will not be denied.

Apparently, someone forgot to tell Pierce that the role of Anointed One Whose Time Has Come was reserved for His Kobeness. Bryant was supposed to throw his teammates on his back and carry them to a title, but Pierce stormed the stage and stole his part, emerging as the best and most determined player in the first two games of these Finals. In the third quarter of Game 1, his Celtics [team stats] mates carried him off the floor; all he has done since is carry them back.

Now Pierce is like a great PGA player who is stalking his first major. He still is the Greatest Celtic Without A Title, but here he is, two wins away from shedding that unfortunate distinction and adding a ring to his resume. Many experts who picked the Lakers in this series just kind of closed their eyes and ran with this argument: Kobe looks like a man who will not be denied.

So how do you like Pierce’s chances of being denied? He’s going home to Englewood now. He’s having fun. Aside from a brief ride in a wheelchair, he’s looking as comfortable on the big stage as Bird or Russell or Brady or Beckett ever did.

In his first two NBA Finals games, Pierce is averaging 25 points and shooting 61.5 percent from the floor. He has taken eight 3-pointers in the series and hit seven. If you’re keeping score at home, that’s 87.5 percent . . . on 3s . . . with people covering him (sort of). It almost defies logic. The last Celtics player to look this locked-in from long range was Larry Bird, and that’s when he was wearing his warmup jacket and shooting the red, white and blue ball the night before the All-Star Game.

Pierce only hit four 3-pointers in Game 2, but there’s a reason for that: He only took four. According the official game report, none of his 3-pointers was closer than 25 feet. That’s 100 feet of 3s. And still, he looked thoroughly relaxed and at ease, like he was shooting free throws in his driveway. Every player says he can’t wait to have the ball in his hands in the big games. Some players actually mean it. Pierce is playing like one of those players.

On Sunday night, every time Pierce got the ball and glanced up to see Vladimir Radmanovic on him, he looked like the Cheeseman pulling up to the drive-thru window at Wendy’s: (ITAL)Oh, what wonderful treat should I indulge in this time(ITAL)?

The toughest challenge for Pierce was trying to decide whether to take the overmatched Yugoslavian off the dribble or drill a 3 in his face. Radmanovic is listed at 6-foot-10, but Pierce made him look smaller than Jaelen House, Eddie’s 7-year-old son.

And when the Lakers made their miraculous comeback, it was Pierce who simply wouldn’t let them close the deal. The angels of heaven only make so many visits to the NBA playoffs, and as Phil Jackson pointed out, they already appeared in the Celts locker room to heal Pierce’s knee during Game 1.

LA got within two with 38 seconds left, but the Celtics turned to the surest thing they have on the offensive end: Pierce off the dribble, Pierce to the hole, Pierce to the line. Oh, what the Lakers would do for a player who could do all those things.

The Celtics captain got fouled and hit both free throws, putting his team up four. Eight seconds later, he crushed the Lakers’ last glimmer of hope when he went all-out to block Sasha Vujacic’s 3-point shot. If you looked closely, you could almost see Pierce smiling as he snuffed the life out of the Lakers, and the message was clear: Kobe isn’t the only cold-blooded basketball killer in this crowd. There’s another star on this stage, and he’s got a little something to prove, too.

Pierce still is the best offensive player the Celtics have, maybe even the best the Celtics EVER have had. He was named to the All-Star Game six times and played 57 playoff contests before getting his first taste of the Finals. And the timing couldn’t be better. He is 30-years old, just finishing his 10th season, and he is playing with surprising composure and maturity. When Bennett Salvatore made up an offensive foul on him in Game 6 in Detroit, Pierce shrugged it off and led the Celts to their most impressive victory of this postseason. Keeping his cool is one more thing he’s done better than Kobe this series.

You want acting? Acting was coming out of the losing locker room with that ridiculous, Curly Howard wrap around his head in Indiana a few years ago. This is a different Paul Pierce now, a better one, a smart veteran who knows he might not get another opportunity like this one. He’s home in LA now, happy, healthy, and leading the best Celtics team in a generation.

Too bad for ESPN and ABC and all the rest. They wanted a dynamic, Hall of Fame scorer to step up and seize this championship series. Paul Pierce just wasn’t the guy they had in mind.</div>

 

I've always liked Pierce, well, probably not as much now that the Laker/Celtic rivarly has been renewed. But he has always been one of my favorite non-Laker players. I'm glad he's starting to gain more recognition, I've always thought he was sort of underrated. He's definitely one of the most dangerous players in the NBA, and the world is finally taking notice. He has a great story as well, if I remember correctly, he wasn't even supposed to be back on the basketball court after getting stabbed multiple times. Anyone who goes through something like that and comes back as strong as he has deserves my respect.

Also, kind of OT, but I always remember those Boston teams a couple of years ago, with him and 'Toine. Those teams were fun to watch. Especially that big comeback in the fourth quarter they had in the playoffs, I believe it was against New Jersey?

 

Here's a story from the NY Times, talking about his past, in Inglewood, etc.

Pierce’s Road From Inglewood Could Hit Its Summit Nearby

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'>INGLEWOOD, Calif. — At 5:30 in the morning, Paul Pierce would peel himself out of bed, rub the sleep from his eyes, and hop in his beat-up, brown, two-door Datsun 210 hatchback. He would head over to Inglewood High, often stopping to pick up a couple of friends — one of whom would be unlucky enough to have to crouch down in the hatch. When they arrived at school, they were met by Scott Collins, a policeman and assistant basketball coach at the school.

Once inside, they would often play a game called Out, in which two players would go 1-on-1, and whoever gave up a basket was out — replaced by a player from the sidelines. After the boys had pushed themselves around the court for an hour, Collins would take them to a pancake restaurant down the street, or treat them to “a cop’s breakfast,” as he called it — coffee and donuts.

When the get-together became routine, they gave it a name: the Morning Session.

The Boston Celtics arrived in Los Angeles on Monday carrying a 2-0 lead in the N.B.A. finals, thanks, in large part, to Pierce’s inspiring return from a knee injury in Game 1 and his late free throws that held off a Lakers charge in Game 2. If the Celtics win two of the next three games at Staples Center, they will clinch their first N.B.A. championship since 1986.

For Pierce, such an end would not be far from the beginning.

It was here, growing up in the shadow of the 105 Freeway, that Pierce’s journey from pudgy middle school kid to N.B.A. star began in earnest. Pierce moved with his mother, Lorraine, from Oakland after the sixth grade. His half brothers, Jamal Hosey, who played college basketball at Wyoming, and Steve Hosey, a first-round draft pick of the Cleveland Indians who played briefly with the San Francisco Giants, were out of the house. A basketball became Pierce’s constant companion.

Over the years, Pierce wore out the net, bent the rim and battered the backboard on the hoop in his driveway on Christopher Avenue. He played at the Y.M.C.A., on the blacktop courts near the Forum, and at the Rogers Park Community Center, where he was often kicked out when the gym closed at 10 p.m. But it was through the ritual of the Morning Session that Pierce began to realize that basketball was not just a game to be played, but a craft to be worked at.

“When you look at it, it was kind of nasty because you went to class all sweaty at the time,” Pierce told reporters in Boston on Saturday. “But, hey, that’s what you had to do back then to get to this point.

“It helped me get a work ethic and it helped me sacrifice. Who wants to wake up at 5:30 to go to the gym? I know nowadays I don’t. But when you’re a kid who had dreams and tried to develop a work ethic, those were the things that you wanted to do. Any chance you got you wanted to get in, and that’s pretty much where it all started.”

When Collins unlocked the gym, he didn’t expect to be opening the door for any future N.B.A. players. He was simply looking for an entrance into their lives.

Collins had coached in the Police Activities League, a youth program where he had gotten to know Pierce as a seventh grader. When he became an assistant coach at Inglewood High, Collins noticed that only 2 of the 15 players on the team had fathers at home.

“A lot of the kids I’ve dealt with had no male role model, nobody to look up to in order to see how to be a man,” said Collins, now an Inglewood detective. “If kids respect us on the playground, they’ll respect us on the street. At first, they’re a little apprehensive — I’m a cop. Once you get in there, they get to trust you.”

Inglewood is often in headlines for poverty, crime and corruption. In 1995, when Pierce was a senior in high school, Tupac Shakur sang with Dr. Dre on “California Love” about the city: “Inglewood, Inglewood, always up to no good.” For Pierce and his friends, that song resonated because a year earlier a friend named Howard Johnson was shot and killed.

“It’s a cliché in Inglewood: you either bang or ball,” said Carlo Calhoun, a high school teammate of Pierce. “As a basketball player you might be able to walk down a street that you might not be able to walk down otherwise. It’s a different level of respect.”

When Pierce was stabbed 11 times in the face, neck and back in September 2000, it was not in Inglewood, but in a Boston nightclub.

While Inglewood has a long history of producing basketball players — including the current N.B.A. coaches Byron Scott and Reggie Theus — what really gave basketball its cachet in the community was the Lakers, who played just down the street at the Forum.

Norm Nixon and Michael Cooper worked out at the Rogers Park gym, and Pierce caught glimpses of Magic Johnson driving past the school along Manchester Boulevard on the way to the Forum. Over the years, the Lakers used the city’s high school gyms for practice.

For nearly 35 years, the Lakers were at the heart of the community.

From a quick survey of students, and judging from the amount of Lakers gear worn around campus, Pierce’s return has not spawned any love of the Celtics. The school’s coach, Patrick Roy, is not only one of Pierce’s staunchest supporters, but also one of his only ones.

Not that he saw this day coming. Roy remembered “a kid who was 5-8, fat and pudgy but had some skills.” Not enough, though, to promote Pierce to the varsity at the start of his sophomore year. Pierce stayed with the J.V. until the holiday season, when several players left on vacation.

Roy put Pierce into a game, and he rallied Inglewood to a win.

“I thought, Wow, this guy did something miraculous,” Roy said. “The next game he was even better. I realized pretty quickly I’d made a mistake.”

By the end of his junior season, he had grown to 6 feet 6 inches, worked off his baby fat and led Inglewood to a section championship. By the end of his senior season, he had earned a scholarship to Kansas.

Pierce says he has forgiven Roy, but he hasn’t forgotten.

After a game in Los Angeles a couple of years ago, Roy waited for Pierce outside the locker rooms where families and friends gather for both teams. With a good crowd around, Pierce asked for everybody’s attention.

“He said, ‘Hey, everybody, this is my high school coach,’ ” Roy said, pausing. “ ‘Who cut me. ’”

That sense of humor might have been appreciated in some halls, but for most of his 10-year career, Pierce has had to answer questions about his maturity. He was criticized by Coach George Karl after the United States crashed to sixth in the 2002 world championships. He was once ejected from the closing seconds of a tight playoff game and butted heads with Coach Doc Rivers.

A little over a year ago, he told The Boston Globe, “I’m the classic case of a great player on a bad team, and it stinks.”

This season, he has begun to be viewed in a different light. Boston acquired Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen, and they have coalesced around Pierce. When Pierce scored 41 points in a Game 7 win over Cleveland, outdueling LeBron James, his name began to be tossed around with other Celtics greats.

The makeover, though, has not been without a blemish.

Late in a playoff loss to Atlanta, he responded to taunting by the Hawks rookie Al Horford by walking toward the Atlanta bench and making a hand gesture, forming a circle with his thumb and index finger, and pointing with the other three fingers. The league, interpreting it as a gang sign, fined Pierce $25,000.

“Everybody knows that’s a Blood sign,” said D. J. Simpson, a sophomore at Inglewood High, drawing a nod of agreement from several others on the playground. “He came from Inglewood. If he went to Washington High, he’d have thrown up a C,” for Crips. “He was just telling Al Horford, you’re messing with the wrong” guy.

Collins, the policeman, said that Pierce was not connected with a gang. He called it an oh-no moment.

“He lost his composure and he threw up a sign without realizing what it can represent,” Collins said. “You have to think about your actions and that people can take that the wrong way. But is that what he’s about? No. The bottom line is he isn’t affiliated with any of that.”

Arrick Turner, the recreation supervisor at Rogers Park, has also known Pierce since he was in seventh grade. He talks of Pierce’s largess, noting that Pierce and Baron Davis have taken over Magic Johnson’s Mid-Summer Night’s Dream, a celebrity all-star game that benefits underprivileged youths. He also has put on a summer clinic at Inglewood High in which he is an active participant and has brought Nike back to Rogers Park to film commercials.

“There’s an etiquette of street life,” Turner said. “How do you distance yourself from the neighborhood you grew up in? The answer is you don’t. Everybody can be true to their roots by being themselves. I can grow up on the same street as you for 15 years, but that doesn’t mean I’m going in the same direction.”</div>

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (Brian @ Jun 9 2008, 11:37 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>I've always liked Pierce, well, probably not as much now that the Laker/Celtic rivarly has been renewed. But he has always been one of my favorite non-Laker players. I'm glad he's starting to gain more recognition, I've always thought he was sort of underrated. He's definitely one of the most dangerous players in the NBA, and the world is finally taking notice. He has a great story as well, if I remember correctly, he wasn't even supposed to be back on the basketball court after getting stabbed multiple times. Anyone who goes through something like that and comes back as strong as he has deserves my respect.

Also, kind of OT, but I always remember those Boston teams a couple of years ago, with him and 'Toine. Those teams were fun to watch. Especially that big comeback in the fourth quarter they had in the playoffs, I believe it was against New Jersey?</div>
Yeah it was against NJ. He was playing very poorly in that game and Nets were up by 21 and Toine told him to stop being a baby. Toine was an extremely inefficient player, but he was a pretty good emotional leader. Now that Pierce has Garnett, it's no wonder he's playing so well.

That comeback is actually on Youtube. Here's the link: [video=youtube;3MI3sj3XKrQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MI3sj3XKrQ&feature=related[/video]
And here's the story: http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=220525002

Also very OT: New Jersey hasn't been an elite or even a consistent team in the Kidd era, but they probably played in more famous games than anyone in the last 5 years (both as winners and losers), even more than a team like LA or the Spurs.

 

Not to take anything from Pierce... he was good in game 2...

Posey and Kg should have thanked the refs while they were at it... And Powe should have given the refs a gift, maybe 13 or 14 grand... 1k for each FT...

As far as im concerned about "The Truth hurts"... i think the truth is that there is something else influencing the officiating...

 

Remember the calls your team got when you won the championships with Shaq? Did you thank the refs back then?

Or how about the calls you got versus Utah? Wonder if Phil and Kobe paid in cash or with check?

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (kobe23 @ Jun 10 2008, 10:12 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Not to take anything from Pierce... he was good in game 2...

Posey and Kg should have thanked the refs while they were at it... And Powe should have given the refs a gift, maybe 13 or 14 grand... 1k for each FT...

As far as im concerned about "The Truth hurts"... i think the truth is that there is <span style="font-size:14pt;line-height:100%">something else</span> influencing the officiating...</div>
I totally agree, a surplus of funds has been transferred into the Referees' bank accounts and it has been coming from Austria. They are under the command of the governor of California to get the refs to give 80 Free throws to the Celtics in game 3. Then in Game 4 Kobe will be given 100 Free Throws and have a 150 point game, and Arnold will have him deemed the greatest ever.

Then with Kobe and Arnold, Arnold will head back to Austria to round up the troops and conquer Europe, and Kobe as the reigning MVP will be given the USA. They will continue to world domination as Kobe will have North America, South America, and Japan. Arnold will get Europe, Austrailia, and Asia. Dikembe will raise a rebellion and defeat Arnold's forces and claim Africa, and Yao Ming will be crowned Emporer over China. This all will happen in the span of 2 years.

Quite obvious really...

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE (CelticKing @ Jun 10 2008, 10:20 AM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}></div><div class='quotemain'>Remember the calls your team got when you won the championships with Shaq? Did you thank the refs back then?

Or how about the calls you got versus Utah? Wonder if Phil and Kobe paid in cash or with check?</div>

Utah is notoriously a big fouling team. So no surprise there.

Then again, so is Boston. Did you see how many times they fouled in the first round?? (That's the only round where I can remember actually checking the foul disparity.)

They fouled the Hawks a ridiculous amount of times. And it's not like it was ticky-tack fouls, it was the same damn fouls the Lakers aren't getting in Boston. It was real fouls, like grabbing of the arms, blatantly hitting players across the arms, pushing players. It's the way Boston's been playing all season.