Celtics fans had a good news/bad news Sunday afternoon, when the fortunes of Isaiah Thomas and Paul Pierce intersected.
The good news was when IT led the Celts to a Game 1 victory over the Wizards. Two-plus hours later, the bad news was the end of Pierce’s career as the Clippers fell in Game 7.
Seeing those results, and thinking about what those two guys mean to Celtics fans, I was struck by three interesting parallels. And it wasn’t just that people were joking about Paul’s nickname of The Truth and IT’s new lighthearted handle, The Tooth. (Ironically, Paul once had his teeth knocked out, too.)
The first parallel, which pisses off most of us who bleed green, is that they are disparaged on a regular basis for factors beyond their control. We all know what it is with Isaiah: He’s short. As a result, he can’t play much defense. Although he can’t do anything about being 5-foot-9, his lack of height is held against him even when he sets franchise scoring records and leads the entire NBA in fourth-quarter points. It’s unfair, but critics gonna criticize.
For Pierce, the negativity is usually, in a nutshell: he’s not Kobe. From a Paul Flannery 2015 SB Nation article, Paul Pierce is the NBA’s overlooked legend:
Between 1995 and 1998, a half-dozen future Most Valuable Players were drafted into the NBA with backstories as disparate as their personalities. They ran the gamut from high school phenom Kevin Garnett to polished collegian Tim Duncan, and included Philly’s Allen Iverson and the Main Line’s Kobe Bryant. There was a Canadian (Steve Nash) and a German (Dirk Nowitzki), as well.
Collectively, they won eight MVPs and were key players on a dozen championship teams. They represent the bridge years between epochal stars Michael Jordan and LeBron James, a tempestuous time in the league’s history better remembered for the survivors than the rugged style of play.
[…]
One player conspicuously absent from that list is Paul Pierce, who never finished higher than seventh in MVP voting. Pierce has always been underappreciated, even in his prime when he averaged 25 points, seven rebounds and four assists while missing only eight games during a six-year stretch. He made 10 All-Star appearances without ever being voted in as a starter and was never a first-team All-NBA player.
He wasn’t Kobe, LeBron, Timmy, Dirk or any of the other iconic players we know on a first-name basis. As always, he was the Truth. Simple and timeless.
We’re not saying here that Pierce could’ve put up 81 in 48 minutes, or won five rings. However, The Truth also didn’t play alongside a potent weapon like prime Shaq, who occupied defenses and created space for Kobe to operate. Instead, most of Pierce’s career was with big men like Vitaly Potapenko and Mark Blount. Defenses weren’t worried about those guys. But when KG showed up in Boston to play with Pierce, we saw what happened: Banner 17.
The second parallel is that both IT and PP have now had to overcome personal tragedy. Shortly before training camp in 2000, Paul was lucky to survive an attack in a Boston nightclub. His assailants stabbed him 11 times in the face, neck and back, and broke a bottle over his head.
Incredibly, Pierce recovered in time for the beginning of the season. I can’t find video of his first game, but I distinctly remember watching Pierce play with ultra-aggression, even taking a couple of charges right in his surgically repaired chest. As if to say: You can’t break me.
It’s amazing that this whole episode is largely forgotten, obscured by Lakers fans, mostly, who frequently mock Pierce about the wheelchair incident (because they don’t want to acknowledge that Paul came back on the floor and won that game). But Celtics fans remember PP’s courage when he literally faced death.
And now Isaiah is dealing with his own tragedy, the loss of his sister. Somehow, he has done all the right things for his family, who are across the country from Boston, while still playing all-NBA caliber basketball under postseason pressure. We’re all in awe. From Yahoo’s Chris Mannix, Isaiah Thomas continuing to do the unimaginable:
The plane touched down just after 3 a.m. Sunday, its bleary-eyed passengers disembarking for a car ride that wouldn’t get any of them home until after 4. How does Isaiah Thomas do it? It’s a question asked often this postseason, as Thomas has fought through the overwhelming grief of losing his sister, Chyna, to submit a string of brilliant performances. How does Thomas do it? It’s a question we ask again after Thomas, less than 24 hours after the tears poured down at Chyna’s funeral, less than 10 after the private jet carrying Thomas, Celtics general manager Danny Ainge and assistant coach Jerome Allen touched down, had a 33-point, nine-assist effort in Boston’s 123-111 Game 1 win over the Washington Wizards.
Thomas wishes this wasn’t a story. Chyna was supposed to be here, in the stands, cheering on her brother, not in a Tacoma, Wash., graveyard. At Saturday’s service, through dark sunglasses and emotion he could beat back no longer, Thomas revealed Chyna’s death made him consider something he never had before: quitting.
He didn’t, he couldn’t, and now here he is, the leader of a second-round playoff team, a franchise player proving his worth. A lost tooth in the first quarter – courtesy of an Otto Porter elbow – did little to slow him, and the gap between his front teeth provided some needed levity when the game was over.
It’s telling that having a tooth knocked out is about the only thing that’s made Isaiah laugh during these playoffs. But, like Pierce, Thomas is demonstrating unbelievable toughness. More from Yahoo:
“I’ve just been in continual amazement the last couple of weeks with his ability to function on the basketball court and excel on the basketball court,” Stevens said. “Today’s just like another chapter of that. Amazed.”
Added the Celtics’ Al Horford: “It was unreal. Everything that is going on for him off the court, and for him to still be able to function at this level, his will is very impressive. I don’t know if I would have been able to handle it in that way, and he’s able to come in here and say, ‘No excuses,’ [when] he has a perfectly good excuse. He still comes out, he’s focused [like] he flew back with us from Chicago yesterday … it’s just a credit to him and his way to get prepared for the game.”
The last parallel is that both Paul and Isaiah have been completely embraced by Boston fans. At the end of Pierce’s final game, reactions seen on Twitter made it obvious that The Truth is worshipped by Celtics supporters everywhere. Many in the media expressed similar feelings, such as Matt Moore writing for CBS Sports:
Pierce walked away from the game, saying after the Clippers’ loss that he “had no regrets.” It will be easy in the coming years, when fans who didn’t see him in 2002 or ’03 or ’08 try using his Basketball Reference page as a guideline for minimizing his accomplishments. But those that saw him should fight against this. You need to talk about that moment when you saw Paul Pierce take over a game and win, whether it was a random February game in New York or the NBA Finals. You need to make sure that you do your part to let those who doubt know how bad of a man Paul Pierce was on the floor.
As Paul Pierce retires, it’s on us to make sure no one forgets the legacy of “The Truth.”
I’m pretty sure Celtics fans will heed this advice. And it’s no stretch to think we’ll need to do the same someday for The Little Guy, because Paul Pierce and Isaiah Thomas have so much in common. Each one is a special player and person, a leader on and off the court, underappreciated, and tough as hell. Let’s definitely never forget it.
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