Pierce gets his defining moment

BOSTON -- Larry Bird did come walking through that door after all. He had changed size, shape and color, but the changes were incidental. His name was Paul Pierce, and he was turning into something larger, something memorable.

"He rejuvenated us," said Kevin Garnett after the Celtics' 98-88 win in Game 1 of the NBA Finals. "He gave everybody life."

The story of these playoffs for the Celtics has been Pierce's growth from a scorer to a leader. It has been a painful transformation for him, and difficult to watch at times as he has gone between settling for threes to driving relentlessly to the basket.

Then came a new fear, a new opportunity. With 6:49 left in the third quarter Thursday, 280-pound teammate Kendrick Perkins landed on Pierce's right foot as Pierce was swiveling in his defense against Kobe Bryant. Pierce heard his knee pop. He curled in pain throughout the ensuing timeout as the audience stood murmuring quietly around him. It was the sound of a cathedral before a funeral.

He was carried off by his teammates into the locker room.

"All I felt was pain when I grabbed it," Pierce said of his knee. "A lot of things going through my mind. I thought I tore something. Once I heard the pop, and I couldn't move it at first, I thought that was it."

These are the kinds of stories they tell about Larry Bird in Boston, the kind that drove Rick Pitino to distraction. There was the time in the 1991 playoffs against the Indiana Pacers when Bird hit the floor face-first. He lay still for a dreadful time and was taken to the locker room as the Celtics looked dead. A long while later, but just in time, he came running back onto the floor as if to the theme of an Indiana Jones movie. The Celtics won that Game 5 and the series, but it was the drama that defined Bird

It was that kind of legend that had been held against Pierce throughout these 10 years in Boston. He has been the best Celtic to come along since Bird, and he will probably retire as a greater scorer than Bird, but what had he done to remind the fans in Boston of Bird? This was where Pitino always got it wrong during his short hapless era in charge: The goal was never to make the people forget about Bird, but to remind them of what he did.

Just as John Havlicek brought back memories of Bill Russell, and Bird recalled the greatness of Havlicek, so has Pierce steadily been rewriting in his own voice and hand the legend now two decades old. Having outdueled LeBron James in a Game 7 last month, and having seized the decisive fourth quarter to finish off the Pistons last week, he had this opportunity thrust upon him of a kind he never would want.

In the locker room as the third quarter went forth without him, Pierce tried to stand on his right leg. He could hear the crowd bellowing through the walls as he leaned his full weight on his right foot. He could withstand the weight, and he was able to absorb the pain of shifting from side to side. "I was like, man, it can't be over like this," he said. He was surprised. It wasn't.