Willis Reed?!?! Not From Where I Was Sitting

Posted by Mike Giardi June 6, 2008 at 11:30 am

The immortal Stuart Scott  of ESPN intimated that Paul Pierce pulled a Willis Reed last night. If PP needs surgery on that injured right knee sometime in the near future, I’ll reconsider. But otherwise, can we stop with that?!? I say, in my best mocking Suzyn Waldman voices, “of all the dramatic things…Paul Pierce was in a wheelchair…and now he’s back on the Garden floor.” Sorry. I couldn’t resist.

Hey, I’m not heartless. No doubt there was a chill factor with Pierce’s return from the locker room during the third quarter of last night’s (this morning’s?) Game 1. And no doubt I’m really interest to see if “The Truth” practices today and tomorrow, and what kind of condition he’ll be in come Game 2 Sunday. The C’s obviously need him to be right, for 4 reasons.

1) He’s the team’s best scorer.

2) He did a terrific job defensively on Kobe, especially in the 4th Quarter (and how could he do that if he’s playing with a major injury? Adrenaline?).

3) He’s played on so many bad teams he deserves to play in this series as much as anyone on the floor.

4) Last, but certainly not least, so they powers that be can play that Jumbotron montage of some of PP’s big plays interspersed with clips of Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, “You want the truth…You can’t handle the truth,” dialogue. Now that’s emotional (Hey, I’m a sucker for the big screen, especially last night when Randy Moss, Kevin Faulk and some old guy were hamming it up together. Beautiful).

But Willis Reed-esque? Come on. Pierce went from being in a wheelchair to playing a minute-and-a-half later! I think, upon further review, the chair was a bit excessive. Oh sure, he had the knee brace on, and spent much of the rest of the game flexing it and grimacing (great word, but it always makes me think of the “Hamburglar,” which in turns makes me hungry). But again, unless they have to cut on Pierce’s knee in the near future, its just another example of the media going overboard. I mean, folks in my business love to be definitive. There’s no room - apparently - for a gray area (except for those who sit on the fence or, as Cedric Maxwell suggested, “wipe the bleep of the common man), except life has a gray area. Let’s wait and see what the deal is with Pierce before we put his return last night into the same emotional and physical context as what Reed did. That’s all.

Pierce deserves as much credit for what he did at the start of the third as for what he did at the end of the third. He hit a couple of big shots to open the quarter and quickly erase that 5-point halftime deficit. The C’s desperately needed that energy and execution, or they probably fall back by double digits and then the road becomes much harder to run on. Instead, the Celts retook the lead, and even though it flip-flopped for the next 5 or 6 minutes, I felt better about where they were, and more importantly, so did they. Then you throw in those back-to-back 3’s by Pierce after returning from injury, and you have a star playing like one on the NBA’s biggest stage. Good for Pierce. Better for the C’s, who are now just three wins away from Banner 17.

Let me conclude not with more reflections on Pierce, but by saying “Ten Years Gone” by Led Zeppelin is a a great song (and I can say that DEFINITIVELY). I’m not even a Zep guy, but that song is tremendous, 33 years after it was first recorded. And let me also say that Adam Hart’s running blogs on this site are a worthy read, even after the game is long since over. Not bad for a kid who has an unhealthy love for Circus Peanuts (but not carnies).