OK I gotta come clean with this, I don't care how blasphemous it sounds:
If Paul Pierce didn't go to KU, I think I would probably hate him.
There. I don't feel good about saying that, but it's true. I've kind of been chewing on this for awhile now. I think I mentioned it to Danny a couple weeks ago, and I watched game 2 with a bunch of fellow KU fans and I confessed it to them. I think through two finals games it's official.
He whines. A lot. He also makes sure that EVERYONE knows when he missed a shot because he was fouled, often at the expense of the fast break defense. I realize that both of these problems are concurrent with about 80% of the league's players right now, but it still hurts to see one of my boys acting like that. KU players are usually great character guys; you rarely see them whining and complaining in the NBA. He also makes sure that EVERYONE knows when he's banged up or injured, and that's why he didn't play well (also known as Vince Carter Syndrome.) I was starting to notice that even before the game 1 knee injury, which is a whole other paragraph. Later on in game 1, when he got scratched by Odom, his face was contorted like he got shot for about 3 minutes, and he repeatedly pulled down his jersey and touched the scratch, until the cameras obliged and zoomed in on it to show it was bleeding. OK, PP, gotcha. You got knicked on the rebound. Sweet.
As for the knee injury, I obviously don't think he was faking it; the Celts were in the middle of a run, it would have been a stupid time to do it (not that any time would have been smart. Who are these dipshit fans that honestly believe that he would fake an injury during the finals? Grow up.) I also believe that yeah, it did hurt a lot, and maybe you don't want to put weight on it while heading back to the locker room. But when you return 5 minutes later, and this is all I'm asking for here, don't come skipping back out the tunnel like it's pregame introductions again. Dude. That was awful.
My last issue came during the 4th quarter of last night's game. This kind of goes for the entire team. After watching their body language early in the 4th (Pierce's in particular), I was scrambling trying to find a website that would let me wager that the Lakers would come back. Scrambling. That was the most predictable 22-point run I've ever witnessed in professional basketball. Laugh it up, boys. As much as I want Boston to win, and as much as I hate the Lakers, I almost wanted L.A. to win that game to teach the Celts a lesson. Almost. For a team with so many veterans, and who are supposedly so focused on winning a title, and 'Ubuntu' and all that jazz, that was an apalling performance.
I guess I could bottom line it by saying that Pierce plays like a guy who is fully aware that thousands of people (and millions more at home) are watching him perform, and he sometimes acts accordingly. I'm not sure why I'm not cutting him more slack, it's not like I am intolerant of my favorite players' ridiculous behavior (see: Ramirez, Manny.) It's just that he's been rubbing me the wrong way lately.
I'm probably not conveying my actual thought process very well here. I still like Pierce, he's still my boy. He is still a Jayhawk, and that counts for a lot, and up until this playoffs I've really enjoyed him. I'm guess I'm just trying to say that if Kobe had acted the way that PP has acted so far this series, you would be hearing me throw a HUUUUGE fit right now, and I feel like I should stay consistent.
Ubuntu.
