Sports Guy on Pierce

["Berry, Mark S" <berrym@BATTELLE.ORG>]

He wrote a good NBA playoffs column today. He finished with the following
item on Pierce. I liked SG a lot better when he was basically "independent."
I don't blame him for making the move to ESPN.com-anyone would have. But it
has resulted in a lot of "insiderism" on his part that he didn't have
before. He completely ignores the way Pierce has played the last two games.
I like Pierce as much as the next guy, and I'm glad he loves the game. I
really am. But let's call it like it is.

Anyway, here's the section on Pierce:


Here's a quick story ...
Last summer, right before Pierce signed his contract extension with the
Celtics, I ate dinner with him and a few other people, just a standard
get-to-know-you session (the details aren't really important). We spent most
of dinner talking about the Celtics, the NBA, the season ahead ... and after
a while, it became pretty obvious that Pierce wasn't just a basketball
player. He was actually a basketball fan. At one point, I mentioned watching
ESPN's "SportsCentury" show about Isiah Thomas that week and Pierce
interrupted me. 
"I saw that," Pierce said, his eyes lighting up. "Did you see the 'Behind
The Glory' show about Chris Webber
<http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/profile?statsId=1272> ?"
I told him that I hadn't seen it.
"You should see it," he said, nodding. "That's a good one, too." 
For some reason, I found the whole exchange intriguing. So I started doing
some friendly digging. Turns out that Pierce is a basketball junkie. Watches
all the playoff games once the Celtics get knocked out. Watches every
NBA-related documentary on ESPN and Fox. Watches every old-school NBA game
on ESPN Classic. Watches summer league games on ESPN2. Heck, he even coerced
the Celtics into sending him game tapes of every Celtics game from the 2001
season, just so he could scout himself.
The guy simply loves basketball. Lives and breathes it. Better yet, unlike
most of the guys in the league, he could pick Gus Williams out of a police
lineup, he knows Andrew Toney had an unstoppable first step, he knows the
Lakers wouldn't have won the '87 title without Mychal Thompson ... he's just
a basketball fan who coincidentally happens to play basketball for a living.
And he was sitting home last summer, night after night, watching all these
games and documentaries, telling himself over and over again, "Some day,
it's gonna be me ... some day it's gonna be me."
Anyway, I thought about that dinner during Game 2 of the Sixers series,
after Pierce drained a clutch 3 with two minutes left -- the eventual
game-winner -- one of those ballsy, breathtaking plays that only the great
ones make. And we erupted. We just erupted. Ever since Reggie Lewis died and
the Celtics fell apart, we had been waiting for another night like this,
another game like this, another player like this. So Philly called a
time-out, and everyone remained standing, getting louder and louder, going
pretty much insane -- waves of cheers, almost like a Roman coliseum. And
Pierce was standing in the middle of it, his arms raised above his head,
pumping his fists, nodding and soaking everything in. His time had come.
And that brings us to Friday night. Game 5. Sixers-Celtics. Winner advances,
loser goes home. A sold-out crowd ready to raise the roof again. And Paul
Pierce standing in the middle of it all, ready to make The Leap, ready to
become part of history, ready to shine, ready to realize a dream. Some
things are just meant to be.