Pierce starting to realize his greatness

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We have watched Paul Pierce grow up. We have watched him come to Boston, a California kid by way of the University of Kansas, who inexplicably fell to the Celtics with the 10th pick in the NBA Draft in 1998. And from the beginning, he could score. Oh, how he could score. But over time it started to get more complicated for the kid who always could take the ball to the basket, a kid who always was difficult to guard. He became a great talent on a team that too often seemed stuck on some treadmill to nowhere, the glory days as gone as the smell of one of Red Auerbach's old cigars. So he kept putting up big numbers, and the years kept piling up on one another, until one day the perception started to change about him. Yeah, he could score. Yeah, he could always get to the free-throw line. Yeah, he was one of the most talented offensive players in the game. But we started to hear whispers, too, the negatives that became part of the conversation, the negatives that started to follow him around like some afternoon shadow. He takes too many bad shots. He doesn't really guard anyone. He doesn't make anyone around him better. He's not a leader, even if he's supposed to be the captain. These became the negatives, real or imagined, especially after Antoine Walker left, and too often it seemed as if it was Pierce against the world, too many nights when the world won. As if it had become his fate to be a great player on a team going nowhere, a guy who wasn't playing in those big games in the spring, the games that mean everything. Pierce was an NBA star, no question about that. He made All-Star teams. He had the money. He had the celebrity. He had the lifestyle. He even had the great nickname, "The Truth." What he didn't have was what he has now: a great team It's no secret Pierce was frustrated last year. He spent too much of the year hurt. He said he wanted more veteran players around him. There was talk that if the Celtics had gotten the first pick in last year's draft, they might have elected to go young and move Pierce. Was that going to be Pierce's fate in Boston, a great player on a team that never won, a great player on a team that never got to the NBA's biggest stage? A year ago it looked that way. Until now.Until this year, when his numbers went down and everything has changed. On Tuesday night, there was a promo on TNT for the Hawks-Celtics Game 2. It had a player's face, one half Pierce, the other the Hawks' Mike Bibby. They were saying there was all kinds of respect for a player, but the true respect came from winning. It was fitting. Forget the stats. Forget the numbers. This has been the best year of Pierce's basketball life, as if all the others were simply years in waiting. The frustration is gone. The occasional pouting is gone. As if all of that belonged to some other Paul Pierce, who had all but begun to wear all the losing on his face. From the beginning, he embraced the addition of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. He also changed his game, not in a dramatic way certainly, but in little ways, ways that have made all the difference. He no longer feels the need to take every big shot. He no longer feels the need to be the focal point of the offense, the way he used to. On Sunday night he hit his first three shots, all bombs, yet finished the game with only 10 shots. Wednesday night was more of the same. He shot very well, but infrequently, after going out for a while with a strained lower back after a hard foul by the Hawks' Joe Johnson in the opening minutes. He finished with 14 points on 10 shots. Once again, he blended in with this unselfish Celtics' team. He worked on defense, like he has all year. And after every game, he and Garnett do a news conference, side by side. That's symbolic, too. For they have both flourished with each other, two players who never really won until they found the other. And often in these post-game conferences, he acquiesces to Garnett, sneaking a glance to see whether Garnett is going to answer first, abdicating to him. Think about that for a second. Pierce is the captain, yet in many ways this has become Garnett's team. Pierce has been here for almost a decade, and yet it is Garnett for whom the crowd chants, "MVP, MVP." That could have been a problem. To Pierce's credit, it hasn't been. And maybe this is the greatest sign of his maturity, both as a player and as a person, too. For he's undoubtedly come to know that to truly be an icon in Boston these days, you have to win a championship, the realization that great players eventually fade away, but those who win championships are remembered forever. The realization that this is the season of his basketball life. The one he's waited a long time for.(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)