Bill Plaschke, M.D.

June 6th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

There are a few things to remember about last night’s Game 1: Kobe weirdly switching things up from the first to second halves, Garnett’s ferocious put-back slam that sealed the game, Paul Pierce’s consecutive threes to open the lead, and, yeah, OK, Pierce’s injury. It wasn’t much of a turning point — the whole thing felt a little anticlimactic to me, and no, this is not Willis Reed — but without the benefit of retrospect, it was a pretty big deal.

Of course, Pierce was just faking. Totally faking. So says the Plaschkenator:

The “Rocky” theme played. The crowd roared. Pierce hobbled out with drama dripping from every step. He was so hurt, he immediately began sprinting around the stunned Lakers defenders. He was in such pain, he hit consecutive three pointers late in the period that gave the Celtics the lead for good.

Beyond the obvious rejoinder here — the fact that people sometimes do play extremely well under pain — Bill is aware of the concept that some injuries heal quickly, right? As he notes, the Celtics diagnosed Pierce with a strained meniscus. So are the Celtics faking the diagnosis? Or is it an injury prone to short bursts of pain, followed by a fast recovery. Ballhype commenter Jahneevotz explains all:

With that kind of injury mechanism, you can flip the corner of a meniscus over within your knee joint.  The meniscus is the moon shaped fibrocartilage structure between the femoral and tibial articular surfaces.  This results in some excruciating pain similar to stepping on a sharp piece of glass.  But since your muscles are contracting across the knee and pulling the joint surfaces together, the pain doesn’t immediately go away when you unload the limb.  Then, given relaxation or manipulation, the joint space can be opened up and the meniscus can flop back flat and the pain is gone.

That sounds like an educated, scientific explanation for Pierce’s game last night. But no, I’m going with Plaschke on this one. Pierce faked it for the drama. Totally.