March Madness, or Where did Paul Pierce go?

["Jim Meninno" <jim_meninno@hotmail.com>]

You know, despite Joe's glowing praise of your post, I think your basic 
premise is wrong.  Pitino's comments about Pierce needing to be less 
predictable came in direct response to his 2 point, 0-11 performance 
against Cleveland on March 2nd, and not before it, didn't they?  Pierce 
had scored 20 or more points in 6 of his previous 7 games and 19 or more 
in 11 of the first 12 games of the season.  He then ran into a team that 
had decided he needed to be stopped.  And they did stop him.  Pitino's 
comments, that NBA defenses are sophisticated and take away anything you 
have been doing night after night, were right on the money.  Pierce then 
responded with a 17 point effort in his next game, but got a 'T' for 
taunting another player.  He got stopped again in his next game scoring 
7 on 3-11 shooting in Toronto, and got hurt the very next game.  

It's clear to me that Paul took that 0-11 performance very badly.  He 
was making comments like, you won't see me doing that again.  He was 
very pumped up for the next game.  Probably too much, hence the 
technical.  Since then, he's been struggling with an injury.  I imagine 
it must be very frustrating.  The best thing for him would be to work 
back slowly, until he's 100% physically.  It was not a good idea for the 
team to depend on a rookie for 20 points per game, but Mercer was 
injured and Antoine was taking fewer shots (as everyone wished for).  
Now Mercer's back, but Paul isn't.  Antoine's trying to make up the 
difference and he's forcing things (as is Mercer, for that matter).  

Hopefully Pierce is nearly better.  They can look to him for, say, 16 a 
night now that Mercer's back.  Get him involved, but not to the point 
that he's the main man.  He might grow into that role, but right now he 
seems to take it too hard when he fails.

Jim

>Thomas Murphy wrote:

>Where did Paul Pierce go?
>.....
>Before I get to the figures I’d like to provide a bit more context. 
March
>began - *before* the current slide in Paul’s production - with Coach 
Pitino
>saying that Pierce needed to begin trying to do “different things” on 
the
>court. Now, you may ask yourself why on earth a player who is averaging 
20
>ppg, 8 rpg, nearly 3 steals and 1.5 blocks per game needs to start 
doing
>“different things”?


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