Will The Real Paul Pierce Stand Up?

I’m sure Paul will be fine.

Sounds like something I would have said before last season, which really was the icing on the cake for him. (OK, the Finals was.)
I figured we’d have to be clicking on all cylinders (injuries aside) for us to advance in the playoffs, and we’re not. If Paul and Ray Allen were hot, we’d be fine.
We need Paul to step up soon. Tomorrow night would be great.

He is usually appropriately lazy though. That is, he turns it on when it counts.

One thing that’s worrisome is a total lack of respect from the refs. There have been more than a few no-calls with lots of contact. This makes it hard for him to score if the threat of the drive is taken away. Guys over play him and he settles for pull-ups. He knows that he’s not going to get a call at the rim and he’s going to get hammered.

You only had to make 1 foul shot, without anybody guarding you and the team would be up 2-nada. You choked, PP thats all. It can happen to anybody; but the ultimate truth is, if you had made that shot, we would have won the first game game.

It’s not about the #s anyway, haven’t we learned this about the current Celtics? Paul is fine, I actually thought the times he really looked for his own is when the Celts have played the worst in the first 2 games. If your team scores 118 points and wins, I don’t think any individuals’ offensive #s are in question. Paul will step up big, in some way, before this series is through. All he cares about are the W’s.

and he also had to make 1 foul shot to tie the game, and give his team a chance to win in overtime; which he did.

pp has not been magnifico but he has been better than mediocre. he’s hustled on defense and on the boards. salmon has never been a good defender but seems to be sticking pretty good to pp and this is what is worrying people. i see pp trying to stay within the team play limitts and really hate it when he and the rest let him go on the 1 to 1 mode where he hogs the ball and no one moves.we need a good team movement game and good d and we win.

I think that he plays best when he is kind of forcing it. Meaning, when no one else can step in, he always does. Guys around him have been really turning it on (Ray, BBD, Rondo). He has definitely been giving it up to the whoever is hot. He’s been doing it all season. He will have his moments before this series is done. It’s funny, Ray’s off, the media goes crazy, Paul has a few 20 point games and he is “overrated”. Ha.

Pierce isn’t the problem, except for occasional loafing on defense, which he has done throughout his career.

He made two with 36 seconds left to put the Celtics ahead by 1. No one seems to remember that. If we play any kind of decent defense at all (Rondo) we don’t let Rose go straight to the basket for a layup 6 seconds later.
Sure, Pierce missed a free throw that probably would have won the game but if he hadn’t made the two earlier, if he hadn’t made the one to tie, and he hadn’t gotten Noah to foul him in the first place, we never would have had a chance.
In between Ray missed a shot, Rondo gave up the layup and then Rondo fouled Rose 20 ft from the basket to send him to the free throw line. No one is talking about any of those three things, only a single missed free throw, which as even the announcers pointed out couldn’t have been any closer to going in. Those are the breaks of the game.

…FT shooting percentage in single posession games for “superstar” players at the wing before you can look at going 3/4 under a minute to go in a single posession game and call it a “choke.”

“Choke” references a certain truth about how the player performed relative to the norm, not relative to blind expectation.

Pierce shot 3/4 in the last 36 seconds – I’d bet that’s better than average…sucks that we lost because of it, but come on – you can’t throw out peer execution level when making such a blatant claim.

Guys, I’ll say the same thing about Paul that I said in the game 2 thread about Ray. He’s Paul Pierce. He’s be back to his superman heroics eventually and everything will be a-ok.

If there’s anything to take away from that article, it’s that Ray is underrated, not that Paul is overrated.

Scoring isn’t the problem. The Celtics have been well over 100 points in both games with the Bulls.

Defense is the problem, especially getting back in transition. It’s also obvious that they have to do a better jub of clamping down on Rose and Gordon. Chicago has no low post game, so defending the perimeter shouldn’t be that hard.

To be jumping off the bandwagon?

I think its just plain sad that we are not going to get to defend this thing with KG and Powe and now to not have PP’s best energy/movement/athleticism is just over the top. He’s tired, hurt, old, whatever, its really sad.

That said, unless he is hurt, there is one thing I really want to see. The team needs to figure out a way to punish the Bulls when they put Hinrich on him. Hinrich is a fantastic defender. He gaurds guys he has no business gaurding, Tmac, Carter, etc., But PP can’t allow this to happen. Everything should stop and the ball should go to PP in the post every time they try to get away with this (because unfortunately Hinrich can gaurd pp on the perimeter, even that foul line shoot over you or step away move) PP can’t allow hinrich to push him out of the post out toward the three point line.

Punish Hinrich PP, please, that at least is a matchup where it is your job to dominate.