Pierce: "There’s a Great Chance I’ll Play Sunday"

Couper Moorhead
Celtics.com
June 6, 2008

As the entire known basketball world waits for an update on the status of Paul Pierce's right knee so that the aftermath of the Boston Celtics' Game 1 victory in the NBA Finals can be sorted out, it will have to keep waiting -- Pierce himself doesn't want to know the details. He will wait until the series has concluded to get an MRI.

"Either I can play or I can't, regardless of what the MRI says," Pierce said. "I mean, what is it really going to tell us? The extent of the injury, but at this point with two weeks left, six games to go, we can figure this out after the season."

A little over 12 hours since Pierce's dramatic return to the third-quarter of Game 1 after being carried off the court minutes earlier, he told the media that if Game 2 were tonight, he would not be able to play because of the sharp pain lingering in his knee. With no reported structural damage, Pierce's availability may depend on him being able to play through the pain -- but as for Sunday, things are still up in the air.

"Thank goodness for the schedule being that we get a couple days now. So I'm just going to evaluate tomorrow, see how I feel tomorrow after round two of treatment, and on Sunday go from there," Pierce said. "I think there's a great chance I'll play on Sunday, just knowing myself, knowing my threshold for pain."

The nature of Pierce's injury and speedy comeback was met with some skepticism by Lakers coach Phil Jackson, who dismissed the comparisons to Willis Reed's return in the 1970 Finals.

"I don't know if the angels visited him at halftime or in that time-out period that he had or not, but he didn't even limp when he came back out on the floor," Jackson said. "I don't know what was going on there. Was Oral Roberts back there in their locker room?"

Those doubts, real or not, elicited a few laughs from Kevin Garnett.

"He made it probably look a little easy, but at the same time, they weren't over there seeing him grimacing, the massaging and on the bike and ice and that stuff," Garnett said. "When you don't know what's going on on the other side, you just make up stuff."

Joining Pierce on the injury watch is center Kendrick Perkins, who Doc Rivers said has a "high ankle sprain." Rivers expects both to play, but was much more cautious with Pierce, saying he wasn't sure how much either player would be able to give the team yet.