So Game 1 of the finals ended and the Celtics are leading the best of seven series 1-0. The game was exciting as the teams went back and forth with more than a dozen lead changes in the game and neither team taking more than a double digit lead. It was fun to watch the old rivalry and watch the Celtics’ strong defense against the Lakers’ run and gun style, but the fun ended in the third quarter.
The Lakers took a five point lead into halftime and the Celtics came out blazing in the second half. First, Paul Pierce, the Celtics’ longest tenured player drove to the basket for a lay-up followed by a four point play in which he made a three point shot and was fouled in the process. At the blink of an eye, the Celtics were now up by one point.
Personally, what happened next tainted the First Game of a Finals match up that I have dreamed of for more than two decades. Kobe Bryant hit a fade away jump shot from the right side of the court and both Pierce and the Celtics Center, Kendrick Perkins, jumped up to block him. In the process Perkins and Pierce collided, a play that looked innocent on the replay. All of a sudden, Pierce goes down as if he had been unexpectedly shot in the back. The camera gets a close up of Pierce grimicing and wincing in pain.
Next, he is dramatically picked up by his teammates as he cannot even stand up. Pierce would later state (while smiling at his press conference) that he “felt something pop.” In a scene straight from Saving Private Ryan, the “heroic” Paul Pierce was carried off the court. If this wasn’t dramatic enough he was put into a wheelchair and taken to the locker room.
All of a sudden, one of the Celtics’ “big three,” which consists of Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce, was hurt and there was a question whether he would even play again in the entire series. A final camera shot of Pierce being wheeled into the locker room, his face dejected, the Celtics’ staff surrounding him. How could this happen? It must be serious in that Pierce has never played anything short of 78 games out of a possible 82 regular season games during the last decade.
The horror! The pain! The anguish! The unfairness! This went beyond a simple injury, would Pierce live or die! Fast forward less than two minutes later. Yes, less than two minutes later and the Oscar goes to……Paul Pierce. Yes the man who fell in anguishing pain, the man who “heard something pop,” the man who had to be carried off the court by teammates, the man who had to be wheeled into the locker room like a pregnant woman who had just endured more than 36 hours of labor was in the locker room for less than two minutes.
He came back to a roaring and inspirational ovation and memories of Willis Reed coming out of the locker room in game 7 of the 1970 finals against, you guessed it, the Lakers to inspire his team to a victory. In fact, the background music to Pierce’s dramatic entrance was the theme from Rocky. The problem is that Pierce’s injuries are more fictional than any of the Rocky movies, including the most recent one where a 105 year old Rocky fights a stud of a champion.
O.K., so Pierce came out of the locker room, but much like Reed who only scored four points in that game 7, there’s no way he could come into the game and play right?
This was a devastating injury and even though the replay did not show anything graphic of any type of injury, replays can be wrong. Wait a second, Pierce does not even report to the bench, he goes straight to the scorer’s table and checks himself into the game. What? How heroic. Maybe we should have sent Peirce to look for those darn weapons of mass destruction. But again, how could he physically play? Certainly, he could only be used as a decoy right? Wrong again, that tricky, oops, I mean heroic son of a bitch hits a three point shot. Fluke right? All adrenalin right? No way he could do anything el….oh wait a second, he just hit his second three pointer in less than three minutes. The crow goes nuts, the momentum is gone, game set and match to the Celtics.
I know, I know, I sound like a bitter Laker fan looking for excuses. And I may be just that, but the fact remains that I could point to other factors if I was looking for an excuse such as Rajon Rondo, yes Rajon Rondo getting twice as many free throw shots as Kobe Bryant. Truthfully, I don’t know if the Lakers could have won this game. The Celtics defense was suffocating, much like it had been with LeBron James in the Cavaliers’ series. Kobe shot 9 for 26 from the field and although many of them could and should have been made (what he called “bunnies,”) he did not make them and the Celtics deserve credit for that. The Lakers shot 5 for 20 in the fourth quarter, once again courtesy of swarming defense by the Celtics.
All that being said, I would have liked for this game to have been decided on the play on the court and not some supposed injury that I have had to painfully watch over and over again.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that Pierce’s injury could have been fake. I am saying that it was definitely faked. Anybody who has ever played sports knows that if you have any type of injury of significance, it is impossible to return within a couple of minutes. How many things could be done in less than two minutes? (Insert joke here). By the time I type this blog it will exceed the amount of time Pierce went down, was carried off the court, wheeled into the locker room, came back out to the court and hit two three pointers.
Ironically enough, this coming from a man nicknamed “the truth,” a name given to Pierce by Shaq after a game where Shaq stated that Pierce was “the motherfuckin’ truth.” That nickname had to be cleaned up a bit.
Another contributing factor to why I think that Pierce was less than sincere in his injury is his past. We are not talking about an angel here folks. This was the same guy who was stabbed several times in the neck and face a few years ago at a gay bar. Of course, that story died out real quick. This is the same guy who grew up in Inglewood, California, an area know for its gang warfare. In fact, recently, after Pierce hit a three pointer, he threw up a gang sign. Classy right? So he doesn’t have tattoos and he doesn’t have piercings, but he is a thug and now he can put great acting on his resume.
