Paul Pierce in Three Weeks

**Check out my piece on the Truth in the new issue of Dime Magazine (on newsstands now)**

It’s a little after lunchtime on the first Saturday in December, just a few weeks since your last visit to New York City when you get the email. It’s from Austin Burton, associate editor of Dime Magazine, and fanatical lover of Seattle sports. Paul Pierce. Can you do it? Three weeks…

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Paul Pierce? The guy who is perennially misunderstood and hated, the guy you never really liked. Detested. And now you have to tell why. And it’s hard as hell.

So you read some stories on the man, try to find an edge. There was the piece by S.L. Price in Sports Illustrated that painted Pierce as some type of wandering loner. Where is my father? He’s gone. Will I ever see or meet him? Do you really want to? Then there was the New York Times story from Billy Witz where Pierce as the teenager was compared to Pierce the superstar, the same way you did: Laker at heart turned Celtic soul.

Then you glance up. You find yourself standing amiably at a L-shaped red carpet special at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, feeling oddly out of place. Off to the side is a mashup of Kevin Youkilis, Anthony Anderson, Akrobat. Boston royalty. And the women. Oh, man…

“It’s Marquis Daniels,” someone lets out. Daniels comes strolling through, examined by the 20 or so cameras leaning nervously out over the railing. He gives one or two sly smiles, half asleep and annoyed.

The hum grows louder, the crowd at the edge of the carpet larger. The Truth walks in, smiling. Reporters with tiny digital cameras and pen and pads mass together. Pierce is used to it; he flows while they sputter. He has on a blue button-up shirt, with black khaki pants and is wearing some bowling shoes. Casual Friday. We are here for his celebrity bowling tournament: the Truth Fund fundraiser for child obesity. All night long, you see Pierce in his element, no facade, joking with Kevin Garnett, the both of them laughing at Big Baby, rolling spares and strikes and ugly zeroes and sipping on a few drinks and stopping at least twice a minute. Paul? Paul! Can we get a picture with you? Animated, they just keep pouring in. So-called friends, friends of friends, people who know people. Can y’all just leave us alone? Give me some space! Even you have to say it.

Less than forty-eight hours later and you’re in Boston. It’s cold but your inside. You’re at a game against the Pacers, but pretty sure you won’t get much out of Pierce. Too routine, everything is. Cliche. The players, if they talk at all, are there to get in and out. Once the job is done, get home.

Plus, you’ve covered games before. But this is the Celtics. You don’t want to look like a first-timer, but this isn’t Indiana or New Jersey or New York or Philadelphia or Washington. This is the Boston Celtics, they of nearly 50 All-Star appearances, of 17 banners, where Shaq‘s locker shoulders Ray Allen‘s, and his sits right next to Pierce’s. You walk around the arena and you are surrounded by jewelry, NBA-style. It’s enough to make you say, “What the Hell am I actually doing? I have to walk up to these people and start a conversation with them?” Nevermined the fact that conversation never was something you openly courted.

Upon turning the corner and slipping into the Boston locker room, you are almost knocked over by Shaquille O’Neal. He gives you a look and keeps walking, right towards the training room to camp out until the 45 minute mark before tip, when the pre-game media time is expired. After that, not much else to see. There’s Marquis Daniels again, again not feeling all too well about any attention. Slinked back in a chair, eyes staring straight ahead, his headphones are cutting out everyone around him.

Across the room, a group of about six reporters are gathered around Ray Allen, inquiring about the upcoming Christmas day matchup with Orlando. Allen, for his part, is answering professionally as always, but clearly zoned out. Someone mentions Brett Favre. You meander over and pick up Allen’s voice mid-sentence, “…you look up and you have 20 years. You are looking at Brett Favre and him having the ability physical and mentally to do it and be prepared to do it…” Eventually, as you make your way from Allen’s left to his right, and as most of the Boston reporters move on, you stick out your recorder.

“Ray, talk a little bit about how you and Pierce have been able to stay at an All-Star level all of these years. It’s been so long and yet the essence of your game is still pretty much the same…”

The willowy, 6-5 vet takes in the air of the question, probably wondering did you just call me old? and starts to answer…except halfway through he directs a young Boston employee across the locker room to rewind that play of a tape of Indiana that is playing on a flatscreen directly above a whiteboard. You guess that’s answer enough.

The talk with Doc Rivers doesn’t do a whole lot of good either. All of the beat reporters want to talk about Orlando’s big trade, doing their best to get a soundbite for the upcoming Christmas day game. They do; Doc tells them “We just have to throw away our scouting reports. It sucks.”

During the game, seated in the third row of the media section just above and to the right of the players’ tunnel, you can feel the love. It’s different than most arenas. At the same time, most arenas don’t consider the dance team to be an abomination. The game isn’t a spectacle here. It is the spectacle.

Pierce must feel it too. His weary joints look extra juiced tonight. A steal and a fast-break layup there and an in-and-out to reverse here. The same guy you couldn’t find pre-game is completely in the zone. At peace.

Afterwards, someone asked Shaq if Roy Hibbert and his 17 points and 14 rebounds impressed him. “I’m not impressed,” he tells them.” “Not impressed at all. The only person who impresses me is Blake Griffin.” Cautious laughs trail as he reminds everyone that we know how he is. He repeats it three or four times, then suddenly stops, his vision focused on a reporter standing just to your left.

“But, I don’t know you,” he tells her. Laughs.

Eventually, finally, Pierce greets the media, everyone having stayed around to talk to the man who put together an 18-point, 12-rebound and 10-assist triple double. It’s a professional affair and Pierce is robotic in responding, the crowd mechanical in their laughs and hushes. Then a noise breaks it up.

It’s so loud and bubbly that you can still hear it on the tape as you play that back three nights later, so funny that you call your sister over, “Wanna hear Big Baby fart?”

Two days later, you come back again to watch the Celtics and Sixers. You need more. Walking around, looking for Pierce,  you can’t find him so you resort to talking to Doug Collins or Davis or Nate Robinson. Anyone, but Pierce. Finally, after a muddy game, full of turnovers and ugly offense, you get a shot at Pierce. It’s a larger press conference, and he ambles in to sit next to Kevin Garnett, in front of 15 or so media members. Both stare at the floor.

“It got frustrating. I got a technical. I know I was frustrated tonight.”

“Nothing was going our way, nothing was going my way…one of the more frustrating games that I’ve had in a long time.”

With nearly just that, he exits to the showers and then into the frozen Boston night and then back home. You do the same.

So after all of that you sit down and write, attempting to do the impossible. How can you accurately paint a picture of someone who you don’t really know? Who no one really knows?

Three weeks and all you have is 1,821 words to define the Truth. Really, you’re lucky to even have that.

Follow Sean on Twitter at @SEANesweeney