Pierce finally shines as Celtics' man of the hour

BOSTON -- He has long been a curious player in Boston Celtics history; the great scorer whose fate it was to be on too many teams that went nowhere. The great player in the wrong era, as if it was his fate to forever play in too many games that didn't really count, too many games that slipped away into the mists of time.

Until Sunday.

Until Paul Pierce had one of those games that will be long remembered, the game he threw in 41 in a great shootout with LeBron James, arguably his most significant game as a Celtic, a game that sends this team into the Eastern Conference finals for the first time in six years.

It seemed only fitting.

For Pierce is the one who has been here through the years that saw the Celtics fall off the radar screen in Boston, buried beneath the unbelievable popularity of both the Red Sox and the Patriots; the one who has spent too many years playing underneath all those championship banners that long ago began to stare down like accusers, constant reminders that the glory days were as gone as Larry Bird.

So it also was only fitting that Pierce invoked the Celtics' storied past afterward, as someone asked him while he smiled when his free throw in the dying seconds hit the back rim, bounced high in the air, then somehow dropped through.

"That was the ghost of Red (Auerbach) looking over us," he said with a smile. "I just think he guided it in. Tapped it in the right direction and it went through the net and it sort of put a smile on my face."

Pierce knows the history. He knows this was the kind of game the Celtics of old always seemed to find a way to win. Game Seven, the entire season hanging in the balance. The kind of game where someone always seemed to step up and put their stamp on it, the way Pierce did Sunday.

He had 26 points at the half, repeatedly able to hit 15-foot fall ways over the outstretched hands of all who tried to guard him. Tough shots. Over and over again, as if he was putting the rest of his team on his back and carrying it.

And if the game seemed like a throwback to the memorable playoff shootout between Bird and Dominique Wilkins 20 years ago, Pierce is aware of that, too.

"I'm very aware of that game," he said, "and they don't ever let you forget it when you look up to the JumboTron. I don't know, it was just one of those games when I had it going."

"Tonight was very simple," said Kevin Garnett. "Give the ball to Paul Pierce and get the hell out of the way. That's exactly what it was, no need to ask me any questions. That was the game plan, that is what we did."

That might not have been the true game plan, but it became that. Just when it seemed that the wondrous James and the Cavaliers were actually going to catch the Celtics and end their season, Pierce would drain another jumper, giving the Celtics another reprieve. Just when it seemed that LeBron was going to end the Celtics' season all by himself, Pierce would make another step-back jumper, each one into the heart of the Cavaliers.

"I've been waiting on Paul for that," said teammate P.J. Brown. "I haven't seen that Paul Pierce since I got here. I told him, 'It is time to see that.'"

He couldn't have asked for a better time. This has been a different year for Pierce, a year of adjustment. No longer is he the only true scorer on this team, no longer is he the centerpiece of the offense, as he always was. Truth be told, it became Garnett's team in ways it always had been Pierce's team.

To his everlasting credit, Pierce embraced this. For the last couple of years he had publicly said he wanted more veterans around him, as if he had been worn down by all the losing and all the rebuilding, as if he could start to see the years slipping through the hourglass of his career.

As if he knew that if he didn't get some help it was always going to be his fate to play in too many games that didn't really count, too many games that don't get remembered.

But he's seen both his shot attempts and scoring average go down this year.

He's been expected to work at playing defense more than he's ever done in his career, playing LeBron through much of this series.

And all this comes at a time when he will be 31 next fall, not old, certainly, but now in his 10th year, no longer the young kid from Kansas with the great first step to the basket. There have been a lot of seasons, a lot of games, a lot of getting knocked to the floor.

And yet, in many ways, he's been reborn this year, energized by winning, pumped up by playing in big games, caught up in the energy that's become games in the Garden, knowing that for the first time in his career he's on a team that's talented enough to get to the NBA finals, the game's biggest stage.

Sunday was just the exclamation point.

Forty-one points in what was one of the biggest games of his life, a game that will be long remembered.

"I don't want to let this opportunity slip by," Pierce said. "I've waited my whole career for this."

Red is smiling somewhere.

(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)