Former Boston Celtics head coach recently related his own perspective on an iconic moment in recent Celtics history.
Speaking with former Boston guard Eddie House and center Kendrick Perkins to provide commentary for the recent Celtics rebroadcast of Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals on NBC Sports Boston, the ex-head coach of the Celtics gave his version of the infamous Paul Pierce “wheelchair game”.
For many years, there had been a fierce debate over what had actually happened — if anything — to Pierce, as his seemingly miraculous recovery was widely suspected to be a farce, particularly by Los Angeles Lakers fans.
More recent revelations (or, perhaps, jokes?) have further clouded the historical record, so some words from Rivers on the topic immediately caught one’s attention.
“Well, see I have a different perspective than everybody else,” began the now-Los Angeles Clippers coach. “Because the fans at least were watching TV, right?”
“They saw him in a wheelchair,” he continued. “And all this I didn’t see any of that. I never knew about the wheelchair. I remember going in the press conference after the game and someone asked me about a wheelchair and I was like, ‘What wheelchair? What are you talking about?’ I was in the game, so I didn’t know any of this.”
“Now, I thought Paul may be out when he got hurt — it looked [that way], the way he grabbed his knee — and I had had an ACL [torn] as a player,” added Rivers.
On this date 10 years ago, Paul Pierce's "Wheelchair Game" made its mark on the Celtics-Lakers rivalry. pic.twitter.com/h8jFq7IBeC
— ESPN (@espn) June 5, 2018
The sight put a scare into the coach, who immediately began reconfiguring his focus in real time based on what he was seeing.
“I honestly in my mind, thought, ‘Okay, we have to win Game 1’. That’s all I thought about. I didn’t think about the series as a whole at that point. I was thinking somehow, let’s win this game and then see how we can win the series. And my entire focus was on Game 1.”
“That was it once he went down, in that huddle. If you remember, I think I walked in the huddle and I can’t remember. But I think I said, ‘Guys, we’re going to win this game,” he explained.
Energized by the injury to one of their own, the team was ready to step into the breach and try to win the game without The Truth.
Then, it became clear they didn’t need to.
Paul Pierce is a legend for shitting his pants in a Finals game then getting a staffer to wheelchair him to a porcelain throne to finish the job. https://t.co/RIYmMkm6eN
— Sam Vecenie (@Sam_Vecenie) June 6, 2019
“At that point, I didn’t think Paul was coming back And then Brian McKeon, you know, Dr. McKeon comes up to me [and says], ‘Paul’s good. He’s coming back,’ and I’m like, ‘What?’, and and I looked at Eddie [Lacerte, longtime team trainer], because … Eddie Lacerte at the time thought he was out too.”
“[Lacerte] was on the floor with me. And so then, I’m looking at can he go in? And [Ed] said, ‘Yeah’, and I was shocked,” related Rivers. “Just like, I’m sure, the Laker fans who saw Paul go in the wheelchair.”
Whether or not there was actually any poo involved in the tale — as Pierce himself would later intimate — remains unknown.
But on the issue of whether or not it was an orchestrated ruse involving the rest of the team, one thing is certain:
“They think it was like we planned this this crazy scheme to mislead the Laker fans and players. No, it was. It was Paul being Paul.”
[lawrence-related id=33732,33689,33639,33353]