TORONTO — After Paul Pierce drilled a turnaround step-back jumper — a shot he’s all but submitted the patent for after making it countless times during his illustrious NBA career — to put the Nets up 88-81 on the Raptors with 51.9 seconds left Saturday afternoon, Pierce had a message for the 19,800 fans making up the sellout crowd inside Air Canada Centre he had suddenly silenced.
“That’s why they brought me here!” Pierce screamed, pointing at his chest. “That’s why they brought me here!”
He was certainly right about that, as the Nets — using every bit of their vast edge in playoff experience over the young but pesky Raptors — used a late 11-2 run to pull away from Toronto and come away with a 94-87 victory in Game 1 of their best-of-7 first round series.
“It’s just emotions flying high,” said Pierce, who scored nine of his 15 points in the final three minutes of the fourth quarter. “Playoffs, close game, taking some shots, making some shots … I really feed off the emotions of the crowd, especially on the road, and to go on the road and beat a team, I think it’s more gratifying than winning at home.”
Pierce helped ensure the Nets came away with a victory by scoring all nine of those points in one two-minute stretch late in the fourth quarter to put Toronto away. After he was left open for a 3-pointer on the wing that he knocked down — breaking a streak of 19 consecutive misses from behind the arc for the Nets — to make the score 82-76 with 2:58 remaining, Pierce followed that up with a layup he made after snaking his way through multiple defenders to the rim.
He then knocked down a difficult fallaway jumper on the baseline after catching an inbounds pass with the shot clock at less than three seconds to make the score 86-78 with 1:32 remaining before hitting his patented turnaround jumper from the top of the key to seal the Nets’ victory.
“Countless, man” Kevin Garnett said with a smile when asked how many times he has seen his longtime friend and teammate make clutch plays late in games. “I knew when he hit that three, I knew he was in a rhythm.
“Then the ball just found him, and he was just classic Truth. Epic.”
Pierce’s heroics capped what was a wildly entertaining game in front of a raucous home crowd that was enjoying hosting it’s first playoff game in six years. There were also several thousand fans outside watching on a big screen in Maple Leaf Square, who went wild before the game when Raptors general manager Masai Ujiri ended his pregame address to them with, “F— Brooklyn!” — much to their delight, and which led to him later offering a half-hearted apology at halftime.
In addition, there also was a malfunction of the shot clock midway through the third quarter, which led to the odd experience of having Raptors public address announcer Herbie Kuhn calling out the shot clock each time it reset and whenever it dropped to under five seconds throughout the rest of the game.
But, in the end, the Nets came away with the victory both because of the late-game heroics of Pierce and the excellent play of their guards. The Nets forced Toronto into 19 turnovers, including five from point guard Kyle Lowry and three from DeMar DeRozan.
Meanwhile, Deron Williams was terrific, finishing with 24 points and three assists — plus committing just one turnover — while repeatedly making a point of attacking the basket and gashing the Raptors for either layups or drawing fouls and taking trips to the line where he went a perfect 6-for-6.
Joe Johnson also was excellent, finished with 24 points, eight rebounds and four assists and Shaun Livingston finished with 10 points and three assists while committing no turnovers and playing fantastic defense on DeRozan.
“A lot of it was how they were playing me, but my teammates were telling me to be aggressive,” Williams said. “When I’m getting in the lane and making things happen, I think we’re a better team. I was taking what the defense gives me, but at the same time I was consciously being aggressive.”
The Nets headed back home after the game, where they will spend the next two days before heading back to Toronto for Game 2 Tuesday, when they’ll have a chance to take a commanding 2-0 lead back to Brooklyn.
“This gives you confidence you can win on the road,” Garnett said. “Now we get to go home and re-adjust, see what we did and make those adjustments for Game 2.”