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It's kind of ironic that Paul Pierce was considered by many to be the #3 guy in "The Big Three" coming into the season. As this well written article pointed out, KG has been solid (although, as is typical, never took a game over and put the team on his back... but how could he when he spent most of his time shooting mid-range jumpers rather than posting up?), and Ray has looked lost mainly because he's a "shooter" rather than a "scorer" (like Pierce), and wasn't able to create his benefit from play calls designed for him, nor was he able to create his own shots (unfortunately, I suspect this will be the case against the Pistons and Richard Hamilton).
As a Celtics fan, I'm happy for Pierce. He's never been the screaming chest-pounding lunatic (I mean that in a good way) that Kevin Garnett has been, but he's every bit the leader and every bit as unselfish, and proved it once again today by leaving it all out there on the court. That final play where he out-hustled LeBron to the tip ball, dove for it, and called a time-out pretty much sums it up. Pierce is an elite level talent, and has been for nearly a decade now, but in conversations about the top players int he league, he always seems to get lumped in with guys like Jason Richardson, Richard Hamilton, or Tracy McGrady. The bottom line is that I think Pierce posesses the sort of intangibles that those guys do not. He showed it today. He deserves and and all praise he gets from it, because he's been doing it for an awfully long time on a lot of awful teams.
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