Sunday Notebook: People Who Think Paul Pierce “Faked” His Injury in ’08 Might Want To Read this
Posted by Zach Lowe on Jun 6, 2010
• Danny Ainge gave a rare interview to Dan Shaughnessy of the Globe and revealed that both Paul Pierce and Ray Allen have said they would like to remain Celtics after this season:
“With Paul and Ray, that’s something we’ll discuss shortly after the season ends. They both have expressed a desire to stay.’’
That’s not surprising. Pierce has a giant $21 million option he won’t turn down unless the Celtics negotiate a decent extension for him—something that could be dangerous, considering he’s already 32. And, sure, Ray Allen wants to stay here. But the Celtics have to find the right price and contract length in order to make that a mutually beneficial reality.
Ainge added this assessment of Rondo:
“I think the thing with Rondo always has been that he’s young and inconsistent. Rondo is great in four out of 10 games. If he could become great in seven out of 10 games, he’s a superstar. A lot of people can’t be great in any game.”
Fair?
• Health updates, via the Globe: Marquis Daniels will be available tonight. I have no clue if he’ll get any run. I’d be surprised if the C’s threw him in there to guard Kobe after suffering a concussion, but there aren’t any more tune-up games, are there? It’s now or never.
Also: Rondo’s gluteus maximus is sore/tight. That’s his ass, by the way. The muscle that makes up Rondo’s ass is sore. Here’s Doc:
“It’s been tight, you see him doing the stretch every chance he gets,’’ Rivers said. “Listen, everyone has something going on with their bodies right now. The NBA playoffs are very difficult, by the time you get to the Finals there’s a chance that every single guy on the floor has some kind of [injury], and we’re not different than anybody else.”
• The Herald’s Steve Bulpett tries valiantly to discredit the notion—a silly, insane, ridiculous notion from the moment it gained traction—that Paul Pierce faked his knee injury in Game 1 of the ’08 Finals and requested a wheelchair because he’s some sort of drama king/queen.
I wonder what Laker fans will say when they read this:
The notion that Pierce is fabricating his injuries doesn’t make it past the waiting room of Celtics team physician Dr. Brian McKeon.
“I called for the wheelchair,” McKeon said. “That was my decision.
“Paul hears a pop and has pain. The first thought is ACL. He said, ’Doc, I twisted it and I heard a pop and my knee hurts.’ Until proven otherwise, that’s an ACL injury. You have to treat it like that, so the clear decision was to take every precaution.”
The answer, of course, is that Laker fans who are crazy enough to think Paul Pierce faked an injury in the NBA freaking Finals will not read this, because reading/researching is difficult and it’s much easier to have a pre-conceived viewpoint based on nothing and stick to that viewpoint for the rest of your life.
The doctor continues:
“It was a difficult situation,” McKeon said. “You had the media right there, with TV cameras almost right on top of us. And here’s Paul in the NBA Finals, and this happens to him. He’s nervous. He’s scared about what it might be. Is his Finals over? That’s going through his mind. Anyone can understand that.
“I wanted to get him out of there as fast as I could. I wanted to control the situation. I called for a wheelchair, but when it didn’t get there fast enough, we carried him off. The wheelchair met us when we turned the corner into the last hallway.”
And:
“He tore part of his MCL,” McKeon said. “That can act like an ACL tear, especially at first. When he came back onto the court, he still had pain.”
And there it is. The great myth of the “Pierce faked!” story is that Pierce didn’t suffer any injury at all. I think people truly believe this. Those people are wrong, obviously.
Bulpett’s piece—which is outstanding, by the way—goes into all the nagging injuries Pierce suffered this season, all the times where he and Rivers debated whether it would be best to shut things down for a bit, all the games in which Pierce’s stats looked like they should have been listed next to some role player’s name and not the greatest post-Bird Celtic.
And then McKeon, the team doctor, ends with this:
“Paul’s the toughest player I’ve taken care of in my 11 NBA seasons,” he said.
I await the response of the Pierce critics. Let me preview it for you: “LOLZZZZ PIERCE IS WEAK THIS IS ALL A BUNCH OF BOSTON BS!!!!!”
• The Celtics said all the standard stuff teams say during media availability after losing Game 1 of the Finals, but it does seem they understand the importance of tonight’s game. Here’s Pierce, via the Globe:
“Obviously, we have three games at home, but the most important game is the next game up, and that’s No. 2. We don’t want to dig ourselves too deep of a hole. We haven’t been in a two-game deficit in all playoffs. It’s definitely important for us to bounce back in Game 2, so we don’t find ourselves clawing to get back in the series before you go home for three games. Either way, when you go home, games aren’t guaranteed.”
• Kevin Arnovitz writing in the ESPN Daily Dime does his usual detailed job explaining why Pau Gasol’s allegedly controversial comments about KG—”He’s lost some explosiveness”—aren’t really controversial:
The general takeaway from Gasol’s remarks was: Them fightin’ words! Gasol just said that one of the league’s most prideful, accomplished power forwards had lost a step!
Guess what? Gasol’s comments were entirely truthful — and weren’t meant as any slight to the Celtics forward.
Garnett has lost a step. You don’t have to look any further than the video from Game 1 to arrive at that conclusion.
Arnovitz points out that the Lakers never double-teamed KG in the post, something they did often two seasons ago. Arnovitz asked Doc about KG’s performance during media availability in LA Saturday. Doc’s response:
“We didn’t get him the ball in his spots enough,” Rivers said. “He had a lot of touches outside the paint at the elbows and we have to mix it up better.”
The Lakers are not going to double KG. They don’t have to. But the Celtics need to keep going to KG in the post at least a few times per game. It’s a familiar set for the offense, and one that spurs all four players to move creatively without the ball. It’s also key that Boston recognize immediately any time KG has a sudden advantage on Gasol in the post—whether Gasol is back-pedaling in transition or gets caught up in a screen and can’t manage to get right on KG’s back, etc.
Of course, none of this matters if Gasol grabs 8 offensive boards on the other end.
• Gasol seemed taken aback by the reaction to his comments, according to Jessica Camerato at WEEI:
When asked if he was surprised that his comment had been portrayed as derogatory, he responded, “To an extent. To an extent. I understand media try to create situations for whatever reason, create attraction. But again, sometimes I extend my answers too long. Maybe I shouldn’t do that. I should be shorter with my answers and don’t give away just anything so it can’t be manipulated that way and used.”
No, Pau. Please keep being thoughtful. Please keep extending your answers and saying interesting things about basketball. Don’t let the ginning up of a phony controversy turn you into another NBA droid who says nothing of interest.
• Just to wrap up the Tom Thibodeau stuff: The Bulls have officially offered him their head coaching job, and Thibs has agreed to take it. There has been no formal announcement, and there may not be until the Finals are over, which is sort of awkward for everyone. But congratulations are in order for Tom Thibodeau. When Boston hired him before the 2008 season, few fans knew who he was. And, remember, he almost didn’t get to Boston—he took a job with the Wizards in the summer of 2007 but quit after four days.
Now? He’s the head coach of one of the league’s premiere franchises, the man the Bulls have decided is the right guy to blend their young core with whatever free agent they nab in the off-season. This is a crucial time for the Bulls, and it says volumes about Thibodeau’s reputation around the league that Chicago choose him for the job, now.
For more on Thibodeau, I highly recommend this profile Jackie MacMullan.
• Forum Blue & Gold, the Lakers blog in the TrueHoop Network, predicts several adjustments we’ll see in Game 2. The changes include: More Pierce on Kobe (agree, though I don’t think Pierce will take over as much as the FB&G folks think); More Sheed in general, because of his superior defense on Gasol and his outside shooting (agree, if his back continues to feel better); More 1-4 sets for Pierce, in which he handles the ball at the top and the other four C’s get out of way on the baseline.
Maybe. I do think Pierce’s best one-on-one option in general against Artest is to attack off the dribble, but he may need the help of a high screen to do it.
• David Lassen at the Press-Enterprise tackles the Bynum factor. Here’s Phil Jackson explaining why Bynum’s presence under the rim makes defending a Gasol/Kobe screen/roll even harder:
“They can’t help as much in situations where there’s screen rolls with Kobe, for example,” Jackson said. “They have to stay home and prepare to deal with him, if it’s a punch-in or a lob to the basket or something.”
You can forget things like that when you focus on how devastating the Gasol/Kobe screen/roll can be on its own. Few teams have one seven-footer who can set the screen and roll to the hoop and a second skilled seven-footer waiting to take a dump-off pass in the event that his defender helps on Gasol.
• Bill Plaschke of the LA Times is already looking to the off-season, and he writes that the Lakers must re-sign Derek Fisher, who is a free agent (and 35 years old). Part of Plaschke’s argument: Fish may be the only Laker with the credibility to stand up to Kobe. Fun quote from Fish on Kobe:
“I’m sure there’s some times he wishes I were taller, faster and quicker . . . and there’s sometimes I wish he would pass a little bit more,” Fisher said with a twinkle.
• J.A. Adande says Ron Artest is finally—finally!—settling into LA’s triangle offense. The piece does contain some awesome Artest quotes, including this gem explaining why he was spotted working out after LA’s dramatic Game 5 win against the Suns:
Artest said he wanted to hit the gym then because it would give his body more time to recover before the next game and that “you’ve got to keep your body strong throughout the season. You can’t play the whole season without getting stronger because you’ll get weaker.”
And this:
“South America, Latino America, how you doing? Por favor,” he responded to a television reporter who asked him to greet basketball fans in South America. “That makes no sense, right?”
• Steve Buckley raises the specter of the Memorial Day Massacre in ’85 as a possible good omen for Boston.
Game 2 begins in just over eight hours.
The Ticker