Paul Pierce didn't see many of his shots go in on Tuesday night's Game 5, but he got the one that mattered. The 34-year-old All-Star put the game out of Miami's reach with 52.9 seconds remaining in regulation, and it wasn't just any decisive shot.
It was a three-pointer that passed just inches over LeBron James' outstretched hand.
As soon as Paul Pierce hit the dagger that might be remembered for quite some time to come, the writing was on the wall for LeBron James. It wasn't just that Pierce had hit a big shot, the kind of big shot that makes legends out of otherwise mortal All-Stars—it's that he hit that shot right in LeBron's face.
It was a well-guarded shot, and a foolish one to take by just about any estimate.
Here's the shot that will keep the "clutch" discussion going for a while longer.
It was also the definition of clutch, a fact that won't be lost on the endless masses of fans and pundits who've found themselves consistently disappointed by James' penchant for deference when games are on the line.
NBA writer Jared Zwerling knew exactly what that shot meant as soon as it happened:
The rest of us knew, too. We'd seen this before, or at least something close to it.
In Game 4, James had an opportunity to take the final shot, but after dribbling the ball during the waning moments, he instead made a pass to Udonis Haslem. Haslem caught the wayward pass only to take a fall-away jumper that wasn't exactly in his wheelhouse.
James defers at the end of Game 4 regulation.
Two games earlier, James also had an opportunity to put the game away before it came to overtime. He kept the ball that time, though, only to miss his own fall-away jumper.
LeBron keeps it, but misses at the end of Game 2 regulation.
Even those who defend James' tendency to defer at crucial junctures can't help but acknowledge that he doesn't do what the great finishers do. As SI.com's Zach Lowe eventually concedes in his extensive review of LeBron's Game 4 decisions, this just isn't when he's at his very best:
He will go through bouts of clear and obvious tentativeness, possessions on which he passes too readily. But he is such a clever passer that those passes will often be productive in ways even seasoned viewers will miss on first watch, as some dishes were in Game 4. We saw this as well during Miami’s Game 2 loss against the Pacers. He is never going to be an unconscious “crunch-time” gunner on the level of Wade or Kobe Bryant. Sometimes his team will be better for that, and sometimes it will be worse for it.
Maybe there's something to the narrative that clutch shots are overrated. Maybe guys like Wade and Kobe do more harm than good.
After all, one look at the box score might suggest that—if anything—Pierce should be the one learning a thing or two from LeBron James.
But, as we all know, it's not how many points a guy scores that really matters—it's when he scores those points.
Pierce missed 13 of his 19 shots, but he didn't blink with the game on the line. As National Post columnist Bruce Arthur noted via Twitter, this isn't Pierce's first rodeo:
We can only speculate about the decisions LeBron might have made after such a poor shooting night. But, there's no question he'd be less inclined to take a completely contested shot like that.
Instead, LeBron usually makes the correct play—even if it's not the clutch play. His insistence upon going by the book and playing the kind of basketball you'd teach a high school team is laudable to be sure.
Somehow, though, it just never seems to work out when the biggest of games is on the line.
Is Pierce more clutch than James?
It's not that LeBron has anything to learn from Paul Pierce about basketball. It's that he has something to learn from him about taking the ill-advised shot that great players absolutely have to take. There is something to being clutch, cold-blooded and all of those seemingly vacuous buzz-words.
It's called having the guts to take a bad shot and make it look oh so good.
For all the grief Kobe Bryant has received for shooting the Los Angeles Lakers out of the postseason, Bryant—like Pierce—understands what LeBron must still discover. The rules of fundamentally sound hoops go out the window when a title is within tantalizing reach.
Pierce's heroics were especially timely given his history as James' older, less-superhuman rival.
This series is the fourth such occasion that James has had to face the Celtics since Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett joined Pierce back in 2007.
To hear Pierce explain the dynamic between the two elite small forwards, there isn't much more to it than a competitive respect (via ESPN's Briand Windhorst):
“I don’t think it is like or dislike, it is what it is,” Pierce said. “He’s been on some great teams, I’ve been on some great teams and we’ve had to face one another. After awhile it became a mutual respect for the things he’s done in this league and the things I’ve done in this league.”
Of course, to hear anyone else explain it, this is a relationship built upon one-upping at best, and nothing but bad blood at worst. Their history of altercations and legendary duels certainly took on renewed life Tuesday night, and Pierce got the best of it—even if only for a minute, it was the minute that counted.
Jim Rogash/Getty Images
The big shot was also timely on account of the fact that the only other Celtic having a good night was Garnett.
The last time Rajon Rondo played at AmericanAirlines Arena, he scored 44 points while making 16 of his 24 field-goal attempts in the process. In Game 5, he didn't score his second field goal until the last five minutes of regulation, and finished with just seven points on 3-of-15 shooting.
Boston desperately needed someone to step up.
The Celtics trailed by as much as 13 points in the first half, due in large part to an especially slow start from Paul Pierce.
Nevertheless, Pierce knows what so many other champions know: It's the finish that we'll remember. And, oh, what a finish it was.
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