Wednesday night's showdown between the Celtics and the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden came down to a last-second duel — two great coaches, two great scorers, two great teams with winning streaks on the line.
With a debatable 0.4 seconds left in the Celtics' battle with the Knicks, Paul Pierce stepped back and knocked down a beautiful fade-away jumper over Amare Stoudemire to give the C's a two-point edge, 118-116, just as coach Doc Rivers had drawn it up. Knicks mastermind Mike D'Antoni had time for one more play — and sure enough, he got the ball to his star for one last shot at a game-winner. Stoudemire swished a 3 at the buzzer, and it was just a split second too late.
Both teams got brilliant clutch shots from their respective brilliant clutch shooters. Only one counted, and the Celtics eked out a win by the 118-116 final, extending their winning streak to 11 games.
They don't get much closer than that.
"I thought it was no good," Rivers said of the Stoudemire game-winner. "I just thought there's no way you can catch it and turn it with point four on the clock. But I wasn't sure. But then I looked over at Mike Breen and Walt Frazier, and they were the Knick announcers and they said no good, so I thought we were in pretty good shape."
Rivers and the MSG broadcasting team were both proven right — Stoudemire still had the ball in his hands as the clock hit 0:00.00. The red light went off, the Knick star released the shot a moment too late, and the Celtics' bench erupted in celebration, correctly presuming they had the game won.
Just seconds earlier, the shoe had been on the other foot, with the Celtics having one last shot at a game-winner. Pierce nailed it, as he's done countless times before, putting the Celtics in control.
"I didn't have any doubt he was going to take the shot," Rivers said. "I just didn't know if he was going to make it. But you always put the ball in your best player's hands, and the best players, for the most part, they get to their spot. The guys on the bench were laughing — they were all saying, 'Right side, right there.' They knew where he was going. He always has that step-back — it's a tough shot."
The night belonged to the one-on-one duel between Stoudemire and Pierce. Despite great performances from the supporting stars — Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen for Boston, Raymond Felton and Danilo Gallinari for the host Knicks — the game inevitably came down to the two captains in the end.
Pierce finished with 32 points on 10-of-18 shooting, 10-of-10 from the line. He had 10 rebounds, four assists and two steals. On paper, Stoudemire outdueled him, finishing with 39 of his own to match his season high. But letting Stoudemire get his was the game plan all along for Boston.
"We were fine," Rivers said. "We didn't mind his points. We honestly didn't. Even in the first half, when Stoudemire was scoring, it didn't bother us at all. What bothered us was the loose balls, the offensive rebounds, the drive-bys by their other players. That got us far more upset. Amare, we guarded him one-on-one all game, and if he was going to score 50, he was going to score 50. But our plan was to stop everybody else, and I didn't think we did that very well."
Nope — not this time. This was a night when neither team could stop the opposing superstar. It all came down to Stoudemire versus Pierce, and Pierce prevailed in the final second. Unfortunately for the Knicks, what happened after that final second doesn't mean a thing.
