Let’s face the truth, the epic battle between The Truth and the King in Game 7 was as good as basketball battle as there has ever been. To say that Pierce played the best game of his career in leading the Celtics to their Game 7 win against James and the Cavs on Sunday would be a huge understatement. The truth be told, Boston’s inability to win a single road game is at this point a moot point because the team has been flawless at home. Should this trend continue it would be a historic although improbable (many would say impossible) path to a championship. Truth be told, if “The Truth” has a couple more games in him like Sunday, Boston wouldn’t be having these issues anymore and would be sweeping their way towards the gilded prize.
Let’s face another truth. Despite Pierce’s brilliance, The King is the best player in basketball because without a lot of help, he almost single-handedly willed his team to victory against a superior opponent on enemy territory. But Pierce proved that Shaq didn’t give him his nickname for nothing and on this night he ruled at the end. He proved that he too can be a pretty unstoppable player when he gets it going on.
What we got in the process was one of the best mano-a-mano confrontations in recent history as The Truth and The King waged epic battle. What Boston needed the most was for Pierce, their only true go to guy offensively, to drop the proverbial 40 so that the Celtics could vanquish the pesky Cavaliers. So he did one point better and event though it was 4 points less than James’ output, each one of these players carried their respective teams on their back by scoring a nearly half of total points in the game.
Sometime in the third quarter, James and Pierce spoke to each other and spoke of who could “will” their team to victory. "We were like: 'Who's going to give in?'" Pierce said. For all that Kevin Garnett gives you, he has yet to prove that he can dominate a game offensively the way Pierce did on Sunday. For all those jumpers Allen has nailed in his storied career, he scored a paltry four points and was pretty ineffective the entire series. It was on Pierce’s shoulders all along and at least for today, he got the better of James.
Many comparisons to the famous Bird-Nique Game 7 in 1988 were made but a better analogy both scoring and stylistic wise is the 1963 duel between Sam Jones (47) and Oscar Robertson (43) as this was only the second time that two players scored more than 40 points in a Game 7. Sam Jones played for the Celtics and LeBron James is the modern day Oscar Robertsont.
What was beautiful about this game was that everyone knew who the ball was going to, but the defenses couldn’t stop it anyway. Magic Johnson’s analysis that the Celtics didn’t have a player who could take over a game proved wrong. The pundits who said that on this team it would be Pierce who would take “the last shot” were right. He made all of the shots, including the last two free throws that put Boston into the Eastern Conference finals. Whether he can carry them to a championships still remains to be seen.
This may have been a defeat for LeBron James, but what he learned in the process will for sure enable him to win the coveted NBA championship many times over. What his management has learned is that they what James needs at least one pretty decent side-kick (Batman), a defensive specialist (Rodman) and a host of role players like Kerr, B.J. Armstrong, etc that he can confide on like Jordan did in all of those years of Bulls brilliance.
Because those pieces aren’t there, he can’t win yet. But the NBA is a game with a steep learning curve. Just as Jordan had to endure many defeats before finally conquering the mountain, so James climbs the curb a little at at a time. But speaking of learning curves, it was said that this Celtics team hadn’t accomplished anything in the playoffs. In the last two weeks, they have now won two Game 7’s. They too are learning fast. And that’s nothing but the truth.
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