TORONTO — The words were meant to be conciliatory and not condescending, praiseworthy and not patronizing. But hey, what was Reggie Miller going to do, apologize for being old? Slap an asterisk next to his birth certificate? He was 39 years old, six games from the end of his career.
“Some day,” Miller said, “those guys are going to have the same kind of experience that I have. Maybe it’ll help them win a game like this. And then the next morning, they’ll be too sore to get out of bed.”
This was May 7, 2005, and Miller’s Indiana Pacers had just walked into Boston’s TD Garden and ransacked the Celtics in Game 7 of the first round of the Eastern Conference playoffs. The final was 97-70, the second-half score 62-38. Miller had been quiet — only five points, only five shots — but was long past the point in his career where he cared about stats.
“I look at Paul Pierce and see a lot of good basketball in his future,” Miller said. “His best days are ahead.”
Pierce had scored 19 points, but hadn’t been able to stall the Pacers once Miller and Dale Davis and Stephen Jackson got going. It was the first Game 7 of his career, and it was a hard, harsh learning experience.
“Something to draw on,” Pierce said.
Sunday, at Air Canada Centre, this is just one of the memories the Nets will draw on, as the theme of this first round — as Jimi Hendrix once asked, “Are you experienced?” — plays itself out to one last conclusion. The Raptors — so barren as a group of collective playoff memories, so young and green and reckless — will encounter the final hurdle of the Experience experience.
Game 7.
Sometimes, you learn the hard way, as Pierce did in ’05, so long ago that Antonio Pierce was still his running mate. Sometimes you do it in a flourish: Kevin Garnett and Deron Williams both won their first encounters in Game 7s, and spectacularly.
In Minnesota, Garnett had experienced one frustrating first-round ouster after another until the 58-win Timberwolves ran into 55-win Sacramento in 2004, the last gasp of the terrific Chris Webber-Mike Bibby-Vlade Divac-Peja Stojakovic Kings. And in Game 7 Garnett had been beyond belief: 32 points, 21 rebounds, moving Webber to say, “He is a force of nature.”
Williams? As a second-year player in Utah, he pushed the Jazz to a stunning Game 7 win at Houston on May 5, 2007, despite the fact Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming were at their best together, scoring 29 apiece.
Jerry Sloan, the Jazz coach, had effused after that one: “If you’re fearless, it really doesn’t matter how many years you’ve played the game. You’re going to rise to the moment.”
Pierce, of course, got better and better at the Game 7 trick, and once Garnett joined him they made a habit of taking series to the brink. That doesn’t mean they were always successful together — beginning with their partnership in 2008 the Celtics were 4-3 in Game 7s (including 2009, when the C’s won one and lost one with Garnett on the sidelines with a bum knee).
Sometimes, there were epic moments crafted: When LeBron James personally tried to carry the Cavaliers past the Celtics in ’08 with 45 points, Pierce (41 points) and Garnett (13 points, 13 rebounds) made sure that wouldn’t happen. Sometimes there were epic failures: Despite Kobe Bryant shooting 6-for-24 (and Kobe and Pau Gasol combining to go 12-for-40), they couldn’t close out Game 7 of the 2010 Finals, despite leading by 12 in the third quarter.
But again, it is often the losing along the way that helps builds something later on. The first Pierce-Garnett Game 7 partnership also happened to be the first time Joe Johnson, as a young Hawk, ever played a Game 7. Boston decimated Atlanta, 99-65, and Johnson’s plus-minus was an unsightly minus-36. But he won his next two Game 7s as a Hawk, including a 27-point explosion to oust Miami in 2010, the last playoff game the Heat has played without LeBron.
Will any of that matter Sunday?
Put it this way, if you’re the Nets, you have to feel about the 14 Game 7s their Big 4 have played in (including last year’s desultory loss to the Bulls that Williams and Johnson vividly remember) in the same way you looked at your grandmother’s chicken soup.
Couldn’t hurt.