Just look at that face – would you take this guy seriously?
===================
As I reached into the fridge for some water this morning, the Celtics vs. Warriors ticket from this past March 1st game slipped from behind my fridge magnet, fluttered about for a second before unceremoniously crashing to the floor. “Shit”, I muttered as Pierce laid Flat Stanley splayed on a bed of dust. My roommate overheard me. “Don’t worry”, she said, “Paul Pierce always finds a way to get back up.” For someone who’s come to love Paul Pierce only through recent osmosis, I couldn’t have said it any better myself.
While I was quick to give her credit for the characterization, the truth is, it doesn’t take very long for anyone to glean that about Pierce once you get past his chubby-ballerina’s-grace exterior. Wyc knew it the moment he saw Pierce’s bloody teeth pop out of his mouth and slide at his feet while he was sitting courtside at Bloodsport’s underground Kumite in 2002. But that wasn’t enough to stop Paul. Nothing is when you believe you’re wearing a cloak of invincibility.
****
On Thursday, Pierce, KG and Terry are going to be front and center in what promises to be a glitzy, over-the-top press conference at Barclays Center, a hop, skip and a jump stop away from my apartment. I am dreading that day like the obsequious kid who jams his fingers in his ears, “la la la la la la I CAN’T HEAR YOU”-ing his way through something he refuses to hear. While that might seem excessively melodramatic, many of my Where Were You When … moments have had something to do with the Boston Celtics over the past two decades. I remember coming back home with my dad, frantically tuning our illegal satellite dish to whatever regional sports network the Celtics used to play on in 1998 and being shocked at seeing a thumbnail of Paul Pierce sitting above the news anchor’s left shoulder. “No wayyyyyy”, we both exclaimed. “At #10??? We must have given up ‘Toine, 7 first round picks and promised to re-sign ML Carr to nab him”. He’d fallen right into our lap.
*****
In Middlesex, the heroine, Calliope, looks back on her childhood, remembering the various chapters of her life by the Cadillac make her father was driving at the time – the futuristic Fleetwood, the Eldorado, the sedan DeVille, or the “Florida Special”. Instead of Cadillacs, my life markers were the rotating cast of characters who donned green on opening night every year (of which there were many during the P*tino reign of squeals & terror). Outside of my regally goofy cat, Wonka, basketball was and always will be the single safe ground that my family can stomp on all at once without someone being immediately flung off the mat. Over the last 16 years, players have come and gone, I’ve graduated, moved, started anew on various points of the map; the one thing that had never changed was the immutability of Paul Pierce, the Celtic. That and my mom’s trademark lipstick shade.
Unlike Celtics fans who find themselves hundreds of miles away from Pierce’s new home, the physical distance that separates me from the arena where Pierce will soon be producing feats of seeming magic – the first few of which will surprise Brooklynites unaccustomed to his clunky effectiveness – should, in principle, provide some sort of solace. It’s still more bitter than it is sweet, but I imagine those proportions will continue shifting towards the saccharine side of the scale.
Will Nets fans be savvy enough to appreciate the tension in every Paul Pierce-led possession, simultaneously on the cusp of an unseemly turnover while flirting with an incredible degree of difficulty grotesque hoop and bodily harm? He might just be the original Schrodinger’s Cat of the NBA – someone whose core identity somehow embodies mutually exclusive states of being. And that, is true beauty of Paul Pierce. He came into the league overlooked and undervalued, barking out names of players that had been picked before him after draining jumpers to remind teams of their folly. And it took a magical 2008 championship series where he outshone Kobe Bryant on the offensive end and made good on what he’d been telling the media all along about his cumbersome defense to get people to fleetingly agree with him.
*****
Restless and full of angst earlier in his career, Paul Pierce seems completely at peace with himself now. He exudes a certain serenity, and allows himself to be photographed in frog costumes and buried in sand. But don’t let appearances fool you: while he may have accomplished what he’d set out to do both in life and basketball, none of that will ever compromise the competitive edge or erode his unwavering faith in his ability to ice a game. Just when you’ve counted him out, he’ll slip into that worn out cloak and frustrate beat writers by forcing them to scrap and re-write that night’s game story.
But it’s that raspy voice, those mischievous eyes and gawd-awful oversize outfits (that I’m surprised never drew the ire of both his wife and front office fascists) that I’m going to miss the most. I’m not sure there’s a way to spin Udonis Haslem’s once condemnation of Pierce as a studio gangster into something of an affectionate term, but that’s what I’m going to try to do; as unintimidating as the posturing and scowling has always been, nothing has ever been more authentic than the bordering-on-delusional confidence in Pierce’s game. Except for maybe exhibit A and B below.
Such are the United States of Paul Pierce: an endearing collection of ill-fitting pieces.
Recently ambushed by TMZ, Pierce told a reporter he had another ten years in him, which drew incredulous laughter as the statement was dismissed as paparazzi fodder. It most likely was, but I wouldn’t be so sure. Remember that sleight of hand trick? For someone who enjoys embracing contradictions, I see no reason why he shouldn’t continue sneering at convention and expectation.
My mom had to pick another lipstick shade after they discontinued the one she’d been buying for decades. It was hard at first, but she survived. I’m going to have to do the same and settle for that walk around corner to Barclays Center in my Celtics #34 jersey and hope that Wyc Grousbeck makes good on that promise of seeing Pierce retire as a Celtic. In 9 years time.
=================
A worthy post scriptum: Has there ever been a professional athlete who ever cathartically and publicly (almost embarrassingly) sobbed the way Pierce did as he was finally admitted into the pantheon of Celtics greats? I doubt Kobe would ever go along with wearing a Boston Celtics t-shirt under his warm ups, but I would argue that there will never, ever, ever be another Paul Pierce in Boston.
