Paul Claims Game 3

If members and observers of the NBA have learned anything over the 17 years that Paul Pierce has been in the league, it’s that the game isn’t over until The Truth says it’s over. On Saturday night, Paul made that statement emphatically once more.

No. 34 ended Game 3 of the second round playoff series between the Washington Wizards and Atlanta Hawks by adding to his Hall of Fame resume, which is already stacked with clutch game-deciding shots, when he banked home at 21-foot step-back jumper at the buzzer to give the Wiz a 103-101 win and a 2-1 lead in the best of seven series.

For a while, it appeared as though Washington would come away from Game 3 with an easy victory. After building a 13-point halftime lead, the Wizards took it to the Hawks in the third quarter and early in the fourth their advantage reached 21 points. But before the Wiz could closeout a decisive victory, the Hawks got hot and on the other end D.C. went ice cold. As a result the lead dwindled, and a triple by Mike Muscala with 14.8 seconds to go completed Atlanta’s comeback, tying the score at 101-101.

But Washington had one final possession, and with star point guard John Wall out, the ball was in the hands of Paul—a place playoff games often go to end.

One again, despite three ATL defenders in his face, The Truth delivered.

Afterward, ESPN’s Chris Broussard interviewed an elated Paul on the court afterward, asking if he called bank on that shot. No. 34 gave a classic response that will not only live in the pantheon of Paul Pierce quotes, but will also live forever in D.C. sports lore.

“I called game,” he responded emphatically.

Later, as he sat behind the podium at his postgame press conference, Paul expanded on that quip.

But he refused to answer whether or not he intended to use the backboard on the shot that put Washington up 2-1 in the series.

“People don’t understand, those types of shots go in due to hard work,” Paul said after the game. “That’s not something I just pull out of my back pocket because I’ve done it. This is stuff I work on. I work on jabbing at the elbow, step-back jumpers, shooting over the top. I’ve done it for a long time, and just because I’m in my 17th year doesn’t mean I’m not going to continue to work. … Usually at the end of the game, we would have put the ball in Beal’s hand or Wall’s hand, but it came to me today and I was ready.”

Wall, who missed the game with five non-displaced fractures in his hand, was one of a hoard of Wizards who mobbed No. 34 after his game-winner. And while many were writing the obituary of the D.C. squad after the announcement of the injury, Paul spent the long wait between Games 2 & 3 doing everything he could to not only keep his team alive, but also to put them in the driver’s seat for the series.

Before drilling the decisive basket, No. 34 was terrific while he was on the floor, but he struggled with early foul trouble that limited him to just 26 total minutes of action in the game.

He still managed to finish with 13 points, seven rebounds and an assist while turning it over just once despite increased ball-handling duties with Wall sidelined. Paul and his teammates never doubted themselves, of course, and The Truth reaffirmed that after the Wizards dominated the Hawks for much of Game 3 without Wall.

“There was a sense we would lose in the first round to Toronto,” he said. “Everybody’s going to have their opinion. This is a great group of guys who understand when we’re on, when we’re at our best, we feel like it’s only us in that locker room who’s going to give us a chance. They put the predictions out each round, I know some of the guys see it. I hear it. But we don’t really pay attention to that. We felt like we should have won Game 2, truthfully. Even with John out, we feel like we have enough in that room to win a game, to win this series, and it’s not going to deter us from our goals.”

Still, there’s no denying that the news of the extent of Wall’s injury was a serious blow to the team’s morale.

Wall, 24, had just finished a career year and developed a new controlled confidence in his game thanks to a season spent with The Truth. Before suffering the injury, he was leading the NBA in assists in the postseason, with no other player even within four dimes of his 12.6 per game.

“It’s definitely difficult for the team, but I’m sure it’s even more devastating for John,” Paul said on Thursday.

The playoffs don’t get paused when a player gets injured. A veteran of 12 playoff appearances and more than 150 playoff games played, Paul knows this better than anyone. The Wizards are also far from the only team that’s been bitten by the injury bug in the 2015 playoffs. As much as they are about talent and teamwork rising to the top, the long NBA postseason is a war of attrition.

So Paul and his teammates got over the tough news of Wall’s injury and on Saturday at the Verizon Center, Washington did not look like a squad missing its only All-Star.

An ugly start to the game saw the Wizards miss a pair of shots and Ramon Sessions—taking over the starting point guard duties for Wall—turn the ball over twice in the first two minutes. However the Hawks didn’t get much going much either. Atlanta missed a trio of threes and also turned it over once in the sloppy start to the game.

Atlanta managed to break the deadlock with a bucket early, but The Truth provided an answer when he fired up a deep jumper from downtown to finally put Washington on the board at the 9:40 mark.

After No. 34 broke the ice, the rest of the Wizards jumped in and knocked down four of their next five shots to sprint ahead to an early 11-4 lead. Atlanta made a small run, but the Wiz rattled off another few baskets before Paul drained a 20-footer to push the lead to 12 with just more than two minutes left in the first frame.

He added another from beyond the arc in the second quarter to finish the half with eight points and five rebounds. Without Wall sprinting up and down the court to dissect defenses, Washington was forced to rely on ball movement to get open looks. This led to a more balanced scoring attack, and Paul was one of four Wizards who scored exactly eight points in the first half. Sessions added seven and Nene led the team with 13 big points after not making a single field goal in the first two games of the series.

As Paul told reporters after the game, he made a point to get Nene involved early.

“I said yesterday in practice, ‘We gotta get the big fella going,’” Paul said about the Wizards’ starting power forward. “It’s not nothing he’s doing,

[we] have to do a better job of getting Nene in position to score. … I told him before the game, I said, ‘Big fella, we going to you today. You’re gonna get more than three shots, you’re going to get more than enough opportunity. We’re going to go to you and I want you to be aggressive.’ I thought he really set the tone early in the game on how we wanted to play. When our inside game is established, it really opens up things for our perimeter shooting.”

The early interior dominance by Nene and Wiz center Marcin Gortat—the two combined for 21 points on 10-for-12 shooting, eight rebounds and four blocks in the first half—eventually opened things up for Washington on the perimeter, as Paul had intimated. After overcoming their slow start, they connected often from deep, finishing 6-of-15 from beyond the arc compared to the Hawks’ 3-for-8.

After establishing a double-digit lead late in the first frame and carrying it through the second, the Wizards appeared primed to close the game in the third. They were just as effective as they had been in the first two frames, including four more treys on nine attempts, stretching their 56-43 halftime lead to 85-66 after three periods. Then, just over two minutes into the fourth a bucket by Will Bynum put Washington up 91-70, which forced an Atlanta timeout as the Hawks searched for an answer.

That score marked the high point of the game for the Wizards. But instead of closing it out from there, a freefall followed, leaving them perilously close to a devastating defeat.

Paul entered the game at the 8:07 mark and the Wiz still up by 17, but the Hawks weren’t ready to give up and less than a minute after No. 34 had re-entered the game, Atlanta’s second unit went off.

The Hawks mounted a 17-0 run that turned a 94-74 game into just a three-point Wizards lead in less than five minutes. With Washington unable to put points on the board in the fourth quarter and the Hawks quickly narrowing the gap, it became more and more likely that the Wizards would need Paul to deliver another magic moment if they wanted to pull out the win on their home court.

The Truth, as he always does, came up clutch.

The Wizards nearly stopped the game from getting to that point. After Schroder and Bynum exchanged free throws, Washington set out to frustrate Atlanta on their final possession. But a broken play somehow resulted in a successful three by Muscala, a second-year forward who had made just nine triples in his entire NBA career before that shot. It was his first-ever postseason three-pointer, it tied the game at 101, and it left 14.1 showing on the clock when Wiz coach Randy Wittman called timeout.

During the final break of the game, Wittman drew up a play that essentially resulted in Paul getting an isolation look. But The Truth noted afterward that the play was more intricate than observers realized. Beal found No. 34 with the much-smaller Schroder on him at the left elbow, where he held the ball for a few seconds as the clock wound down, then made his move.

After getting to his sweet spot, the elbow, Paul launched his signature step-back. A slick turnaround maneuver before the shot allowed him to avoid Kyle Korver, who was running to the elbow to help contest, and his long jumper snuck past the outstretched fingertips of Schroder and Kent Bazemore.

The ball bounced cleanly off the square of the backboard and dropped in as the buzzer sounded, giving the Wizards an incredible 103-101 victory in front of an absolutely hysterical Washington crowd.

“I had it on the elbow. What more can you ask for? You got Truth at the elbow with the game on the line,” Paul proclaimed to ESPN’s Chris Broussard immediately after the game.

No. 34 later elaborated on the play call from Wittman and why he felt so comfortable taking the shot.

“I got the ball in a great spot, Coach drew up the play,” Paul explained after his instant-classic moment. “It was a play we just put in yesterday. Got the switch, got the smaller guy on me, took my time, I wanted to make sure I took the shot with no time on the clock. I’ve been in those situations many times, if it went to overtime or if I missed the shot, we didn’t want them to have a shot to call a timeout and advance the ball. So I just took my time, got to my spot and I was able to knock it down.”

NEXT UP

After having three days to think about their Game 2 disappointment before Saturday’s euphoric finish, the Wiz have a much quicker turnaround for Game 4, which will be played at the Verizon Center on Monday night.

The game presents a golden opportunity for Washington to take a 3-1 series lead before heading back to Atlanta for Game 5. There haven’t been many updates on Wall’s hand and when or if he’ll be able to play again in the postseason, but the Wizards looked just fine without him for most of Game 3.

Though he didn’t have much time to savor his sweet shot before going back to work to prepare for Game 4, Paul noted that he is enjoying this ride while he can, knowing that he won’t be able to do this forever.

“It’s been really fun for me, truthfully,” he said of his first year in the nation’s capital. “It’s been a great ride here in D.C., just the youth here, the veterans around, embracing the city. My family really likes it, it’s just been a great ride so far, a great year. I’m still soaking it up because I don’t have too many more of these left, I wanna enjoy it. I’m having fun in games and in practice, the hockey games, I’m enjoying it. I’m enjoying my last years here in the league.”

Game 4 is scheduled for a 7 p.m. ET tip on Monday night and can be seen nationally on TNT.

RELATED LINKS

• Pierce’s jumper at buzzer lifts Wizards in Game 3 (ESPN, May 9, 2015)
• Paul Pierce postgame interview (Monumental Network, May 9, 2015)
• Game 4 preview (ESPN)
• Every team needs a player like Pierce (USA Today, May 10, 2015)
• Pierce brings exactly what he promised to DC (SB Nation, May 10, 2015)
• Dennis Schroeder calls Pierce’s shot “lucky” (The Washington Post, May 9, 2015)
• Pierce saves Wizards from historic collapse in Game 3 (Bleacher Report, May 9, 2015)
• Pierce: “I called game. That’s why I’m here.” (The Washington Post, May 10, 2015)
• DeMarre Carroll regrets not being in game on final play (Sporting News, May 10, 2015)