PAUL PIERCE
Paul Pierce and the Boston Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers 98-88 at the TD Banknorth Garden Thursday night to take a 1-0 advantage in the NBA Finals. Early in the third quarter, Pierce fell to the hardwood and grasped his right knee in apparent agony. Providing the illusion that he was immobile, Pierce was carried off the court by his teammates and he was transported to the locker room in a wheel chair. Despite his horrific and debilitating injury, Pierce astonishingly returned to game action unscathed within a matter of minutes and finished the contest with 22 points on 7 of 10 shooting.
Although Pierce has not had an MRI scan to determine the condition of his meniscus, Celtics officials insist that the former University of Kansas star has no structural damage to his knee and they anticipate that he will be ready to play in Game 2 on Sunday evening in Beantown.“I’m not planning on getting an MRI until after the season,” Pierce said Friday. “So I mean, it could be bad, but right now I’m just getting treatments and see how I feel on Sunday,” Pierce said Friday.
Some onlookers and analysts have had the audacity to compare Pierce’s plight Thursday to Willis Reed’s comeback from a serious hip injury in Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals.
Lakers Head Coach Phil Jackson, who was a teammate of Reed on that championship-winning New York Knicks squad, took umbrage with the insane comparison and he questioned the legitimacy of Pierce’s injury.
“If I’m not mistaken, I think Willis Reed missed a whole half and three quarters almost of a game and literally had to have a shot, a horse shot, three or four of them in his thigh to come back out and play,” the Zen Master recalled. “Paul got carried off and was back on his feet in a minute. I don’t know if the angels visited him in that timeout period that he had or not, but he didn’t even limp when he came back out on the floor.”
Jackson continued his justifiable smear campaign against Pierce’s validity by sarcastically questioning whether a certain controversial American televangelist worked his miracles on “the Truth.”
“I don’t know what was going on. Was Oral Roberts back there in their locker room?”
The truth is, Paul Pierce wasn’t genuinely wounded. Pierce, who was raised in California near Hollywood, always had a sincere desire to become a respected thespian and Thursday night in Boston was his inaugural performance as an African American version of “Tiny” Tim Cratchit. By Sunday’s tip-off, look for “the false” to have his limb supported by an iron frame.
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