He staggered the final few steps to the free-throw line, looking like Jimmy Brown from back in the day after four or five Giants piled on him. He had the black support tape on his aching shoulder, he had a look on his face that said: I’m too old for this …
And here is where the crowd at Barclays Center perked up.
“PAUL PIERCE!”
“PAUL PIERCE!”
He made the first shot which is all he had to do, nudging the Nets out to a 101-97 lead over Toronto, the Raptors out of timeouts. They were going to win, and they were going to slice a game off the lead in the Atlantic, and even that didn’t matter as much as this:
The Nets were going to close out a statement game. And Paul Pierce was going to get them there. He would do this knowing he’d probably need a whole pile of Advil to sleep afterward, knowing he’s not 25 anymore, knowing he’d been given the option to take the night off.
Knowing he’d said: No, thank you.
“We have 20 games to go,” he would say later. “Every game is big for us, moving up the standings.”
Earlier in the day, Pierce had two significant conversations — actually, they were more like declarations. The first was with his coach, who arrived at Barclays thinking Pierce would be wearing street clothes.
“Can you go?” Jason Kidd asked.
“Yeah,” Pierce said. “I’m in.”
Later, before they took the floor, Pierce gathered his teammates and that message was just as clear, just as succinct: “If we lose this game, we have no chance to win the division.”
Then he made sure they would win the game and, at least mathematically, would still have a chance to win the division. It was as fun a game as there’s been at Barclays, the Raptors racing out to a 12-point lead in the first quarter, the Nets taking a 13-point lead in the third, the teams lurking within five points of each other the entire fourth.
And Pierce, twice, taking command. The first time, the Raptors had snuck within a point, 86-85, and in a 13-second stretch he drained a 3, made a steal, and sank a free throw to push the lead back out to five, and the 17,351 people inside the building actually made the rafters rattle.
Then, after the Raptors had finally retaken the lead, and after the Nets had squared the game again at 94 on a short Andray Blatch hook, the ball was in Pierce’s hands again, 74 seconds left. This is where it’s helpful to have a Hall of Famer’s muscle memory. Pierce had only faced a similar shot, similar stakes, maybe 30,000 times in his previous life as a Celtic. He made a lot of those.
Now he made another. Splash. The Nets never trailed again.
“This team here in Brooklyn,” Toronto coach Dwane Casey said, “is a championship-caliber team.”
You can forgive Casey for getting a little carried away. It was an entertaining game, but his team still has a three-game cushion in the Atlantic and has a schedule coming down the stretch that’s helpfully loaded with lousy teams. And there’s the small matter of the Pacers and the Heat …
But Raptors-Nets would sure be a hell of a lot of fun as a first-round series.
“I think we may see each other again,” Mason Plumlee said. “It was a big game. That’s why we had to have Paul on the floor.”
There wasn’t a doubt from where Pierce was sitting. He doesn’t mind missing 47 ½ minutes against the Kings. There are plenty of games left with the Cavs and the Sixers and the Magic. He wasn’t sitting here. And he certainly wasn’t going to cower at the prospect of taking a big shot.
“Confidence,” he said, grinning. “I’ve been that way since I was 2 years old.”
Thirty-four years later, old No. 34 dragged his weary self up and down Barclays Center and brought the Nets home. He wasn’t brought here to be the star he used to be, but the gritty gamer he still is. The Knicks are still the Knicks, and even in repose they command so much of the attention in this basketball city.
As the man once crooned: Melodrama’s so much fun/In black and white for everyone to see …
The Nets will settle for playing meaningful games, with Paul Pierce on their side. That’s not a terrible consolation prize.