BOSTON – Paul Pierce engineered the end of a 22-year championship drought, led the Celtics to two Finals in three years and racked up more points in a green uniform than anyone but John Havlicek. Although his career will end after this upcoming season, as a Los Angeles Clipper, Pierce’s bond with Boston was forged in a modest 49-win season, in an improbable playoff run, in one of the greatest comebacks in NBA playoff history.

May 25, 2002: A year-plus removed from the end of the Rick Pitino era, and the Celtics were on the rise. They eked out a first-round series win over Philadelphia, drop-kicked Detroit in the second and split the first two games with top-seeded New Jersey in the Eastern Conference finals. In Game 3, the Nets took a 19-point lead into the fourth quarter. Pierce’s 18 points in the quarter helped erase it, and Boston walked off with a historic 94-90 win.

The Nets rallied to win the series; they were deeper, better than a Boston team making its first playoff run. But for a city that measures greatness by playoff performance – Paul Pierce had arrived.

Mike Gorman has been the Celtics’ play-by-play man since 1981. He saw Boston win a lot of big games. He saw Larry Bird do a lot of incredible things. For Gorman, that Game 3 performance was as good as it gets. Pierce was, too.

“I still maintain if there is one Celtic I would want to have with the ball, it was Pierce, not Bird,” Gorman said. “He could do it all.”

Here’s the thing: Boston’s not for everybody. It’s a pro sports town with oversized expectations for each team that plays in it. It has revered Tom Brady, worshipped David Ortiz, feted Kevin Garnett. It’s chewed up Carl Crawford, spit out Pitino, ran the folksy Pete Carroll back to the college ranks. Win, and you are an icon. Lose, and you better have Teflon skin to take what’s coming.

Pierce got that. Thrived in that. He arrived in Boston in ’98, a kid from Inglewood, Calif. – by way of Kansas – with a boulder on his shoulder. He expected to be the second pick, slipped to 10th and played with the controlled rage of a man determined to prove that Larry bleeping Hughes and Robert freaking Traylor couldn’t touch him. He averaged 16.5 points as a rookie and for the next 14 years never posted less.

There have been 15 captains in Celtics history. Pierce was one of them, and few took the responsibility as seriously. In 2000, Pierce was named co-captain, along with Antoine Walker. That night, Gorman recalls Pierce boarding the team plane with two bags from Barnes & Noble. After takeoff, Gorman walked to the front of the plane. There was Pierce, with half a dozen books on leadership spread out in front of him.

Pierce grew up in Boston. Nearly died there, too. By now, the story is well known: In 2000, Pierce was at a Boston nightclub. He stopped to talk to two women. The men the women were with took offense. A champagne bottle to the head knocked Pierce to the floor and a pair of knives began to carve him up. Six cuts to the face, five to the shoulder blades, three to the stomach. One knife wound sliced his diaphragm, one punctured his lung, one came within a half inch of his heart. A city that lost Len Bias in the ’80s and Reggie Lewis in the ’90s awoke on Sept. 25 fearing that it had lost another.

It didn’t. Pierce didn’t just recover. Weeks later he was back in training camp. Opening night he was on the floor. He played in all 82 games that season – the most productive of his then-three-year career.

“I can tell you, we were shocked at how quickly he came back,” said Magic coach Frank Vogel, then the video coordinator on the Celtics’ staff. “There was talk he could miss half the season. The whole season. He said, ‘Forget that, I’ll be back.’ Then we thought he might be limited. We tried to take it easy with him. But he broke through that. He wasn’t going to be held back.”

Boston likes guts. Pierce had them. No one wanted the ball in big moments more than Pierce. The numbers are gaudy – 26,316 points, 7,479 rebounds, 4,698 assists – but Pierce is remembered in Boston for his moments. Playoff moments. His sneering at Al Harrington before banging in a game-winning 25-footer over him in ’03; the 41 points that torched Cleveland in ’08; the buzzer-beater to beat the Heat in 2010.

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