Tom E. Curran • E-mail

BOSTON - Paul Pierce. Drama queen or resilient warrior?

Your answer probably depends on which side of the country you live. Thursday night in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, the Celtics captain hit the deck with 6:49 left in the third quarter while defending a drive by Kobe Bryant. Pierce rolled around for a bit. The training staff came out. The requisite quiet fell over the Boston crowd. Pierce sat up. He straightened his legs. Then he was back down. And then he was carried from the court.

Ninety-three seconds of game time later, Pierce was back on the court, continuing to light it up in what would be a 15-point third quarter in which the Celtics seized the lead for good in their 98-88 win.

The Boston crowd, of course, went ga-ga when Pierce re-emerged from the locker room and went even nuttier when he re-entered the game with 5:04 left.

Asked about Pierce’s return, you could practically hear Phil Jackson’s eyes roll behind his glasses.

“You know, you don’t know what happens,” said Jackson. “Guys can break a shoelace and go out. The pants break down. Drawstring falls apart. You don't know what happens to guys. Pierce was back on the floor in three minutes, so he wasn’t that long out of the game. He came back and hit two threes. I think that was a big momentum change in the game.”

But the cheering … ?

“I mean, I don’t understand that,” Jackson said. “You have the fans cheer, but that’s overstated. What helped them out were those two threes that he hit, not coming back on the floor. There was a little momentum change before he even came onto the floor right there. I called a time out just to settle our guys down. They didn’t make good plays at that little span of the game. I thought hitting the threes were what was important.”

The Celtics hummed a far different tune.

“Obviously him coming back lifted us up,” said coach Doc Rivers.

“When he came back out, you just heard the roar of the crowd," said forward Kevin Garnett. "He was walking. He was up on his own strength. It rejuvenated us, I think to the point where he gave everybody life.”

Pierce said after the game he has a sprained meniscus. He heard a pop when he went down and “thought it was all over,” fearing he tore something. He said he doesn’t yet know if he’ll be ready for Sunday’s Game 2. He also said that, “I was like, 'Man, it can't be over like this.' You know, I think God must have sent an angel down and said, 'Hey, you're going to be all right. You need to be back out there. Show them what you've got."

Yeesh.

He’s not at the level of a European soccer star, but Pierce has been known to emote a bit. After a playoff loss to Indiana back in 2005 from which Pierce was ejected in the final minutes, he appeared at a postgame press conference with a huge bandage on his head looking like Fred Flintstone trying to heal a toothache. The statement was that he’d been practically bludgeoned by the Pacers and that caused him to act out.

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He’s also been around the NBA long enough to know how the Lazarus act works. Willis Reed patented it in Game 7 of the 1970 NBA Finals, staggering onto the court when nobody thought he could play and drilling two jumpers to propel the Knicks. More locally for Pierce, Larry Bird did the same number in Game 5 of a 1991 series with the Pacers, knocking his noggin on the Garden floor then re-emerging in the fourth quarter to lead a Celtics playoff win.

Pacers assassin Chuck Person recalled the moment Bird re-entered that game: “I thought, ‘Well, here’s the second coming.’ He definitely played ungodly the rest of the way. For a guy who could’ve broken his neck or fractured a jaw or something, he really came out and performed at a level he’s accustomed to playing at.”

So you have that backdrop to work with. And even if the level of disrepair Pierce suffered was in some dispute, what can’t be disputed is the fact he carried Boston in that third quarter.

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The son of Inglewood, California who grew up an ardent Lakers fan/Celtics hater, rocked the Lakers in the first 73 seconds of the second half, erasing a 51-46 deficit with a layup, a fadeaway 3 off the glass on which he was fouled (he hit the foul shot) and a 15-foot-pullup to make it 54-53. Twenty-three seconds after he returned he added a steal and, at the close of the quarter, with the Celtics trailing 71-69, he drilled consecutive 3s from the right wing to give the Celtics the lead for good.

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Pierce finished the night with 22 points, four rebounds and two assists.

Surprised he came back, some reporters asked Celtics reserve Brian Scalabrine, who helped lug Pierce off. “Frankly, I’m surprised he had to be carried off,” Scalabrine answered.

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