The Truth has said his piece.
Paul Pierce will be on Any Given Wednesday with Bill Simmons on HBO Wednesday night (10 p.m. Eastern, with multiple other showings during the week, check your local listings), and the man with the best Rick James costume in the NBA was asked about the NBA Finals. You can see his answer above.
He hesitated.
Then he said what he was thinking — the Warriors choked that 3-1 lead away. And that would never happen to a team he was on. (He was on a Celtics team that was up 3-2 on the Lakers in the Finals and lost, for the record.)
I hate the choked narrative for one key reason — it robs Cleveland of some of their due. The Cavaliers as a whole played an impressive final three games, and LeBron James played as good an NBA Finals series of games as you will ever see. They were not given this, they earned it.
That said, if Draymond Green could have kept his hands to himself and not been suspended for Game 5, we’d be talking about back-to-back Warriors’ championships. The Warriors did hunt threes too much and not try to go inside at key parts of the game. They helped out the Cavs plenty.
