`I have to move on' - basketball player Paul Pierce

Having narrowly escaped death in a brutal stabbing in September, Celtics forward Paul Pierce is taking advantage of second chance

Holding his cue stick like a microphone stand, Paul Pierce leans hard into the throbbing beat. Eyes closed, Pierce lip-syncs right along with Barry White's "Can't Get Enough of Your Love, Babe."

Pierce is good. He knows the song. He's sung it before.

He stops and leans over to take a shot, and resumes grooving along, pausing to chat and joke with the friend he is playing with. Smiling as he strides in rhythm around the pool table to take his shot, Pierce's gaze seldom strays from his friend or the stripes and solids.

He is not watching the crowd, and it is impossible to tell how many in the crowd in this popular Boston nightspot recognize the 6-6 Celtics star.

Clearly, not many do. Two sets of eyes want to keep it that way.

Standing a few steps from Pierce, leaning against the cherry wood-stained walls are two barrel-chested men, wearing blazers, unbuttoned. They don't even try to fit in with the younger, more exuberant and well-dressed crowd. They're not part of it, and they don't want Pierce to be, either. When someone from the crowd breaks free to walk over and shake Pierce's hand, one of the bodyguards bounds over and hustles the fan away.

You can't touch Pierce now.

The last time someone did, a knife came within an inch of killing him.

A constant reminder

After the Celtics' practice is over, Pierce bends over to adjust his shoelace.

As the folds of his sleeveless practice jersey fall away from his torso, on his left side, one of the 11 scars can be seen. It's a thin, pink, raised ridge of skin about an inch long, and when Pierce stands up again it can't be seen. There is another scar, above his right eyebrow, still pink, flush with his skin. That scar is harder to avoid, but Pierce is already well-practiced at ignoring all of them.

Others in his situation might look in the mirror each morning and relive a near-death moment Pierce simply wants to look ahead and live his life once again.

"None of my friends, none of my family really talks about it," Pierce says in his soft, shy voice. "We just moved on.... I still have memories of it, because every day when I wake up, I see the scars on my body and on my face, but that's about it. That's the only time I really think about it."

Pierce has asked the Celtics to run interference for him so he doesn't have to think about it when someone tries to ask him about what happened on September 25. It's not that he won't talk about the incident He can, quite articulately at times. But for him, three weeks into an NBA season where he is trying to lift this storied franchise back into the tier of teams that play a brand of respectable and competitive basketball, speaking about the incident does no good.

"I'm not used to it, but it's something that's just part of me now. I look at it as adversity scars and I've gotten through it," Pierce says. "I don't have scars as far as in my head, where it's bothering me. It's nothing that I have flashbacks of or anything like that. It's just everyday life now. I have to move on."

Wrong place, wrong time

An inch from death on September 25, Pierce is trying hard to pile on as many miles as he can between him and an unforgettably tragic moment

Minutes after entering a Boston dance club in the early morning hours, he was jumped from behind by three men. He was sucker-punched, a bottle was broken over his right eye, a knife was plunged through the back of his leather jacket six inches deep into his body and he received 10 other stab wounds.

The case is being actively prosecuted, which is another reason Pierce and all who know him are reluctant to talk about it The alleged perpetrators are all behind bars and eventually will be dealt with down the judicial pike. Their motivation is believed to be related to an incident from the night before, reportedly when Pierce said or did something to a mutual female acquaintance that sparked some jealous feeling and offended the attackers' already questionable sensibilities.

The attack took only a few seconds, and Pierce was rushed to a nearby hospital. Friends and teammates rushed there to join him, and his brothers Steve and Jamal Hosey and mother, Lorraine Hosey, flew in from Inglewood, Calif. The initial prognosis was as grim as the attack was ugly and cheap, yet Pierce was lucky. Although his condition was critical early on, he suffered a partially collapsed lung but no other severe damage to any organs from the major wound.

When his wounds showed no signs of infection, Pierce was out of the woods. He was very, very lucky, but in the first few hours no one was thinking that way.

"I canceled my flight to Texas," says Pierce's college coach, Roy Williams of Kansas. "I was going to go on a recruiting trip, but after I heard, I called the hospital about 10 times in a 30-minute period and could not get through. Finally, I harassed them so much they put me through to some Celtics people, and they told me that his mom was there, his brother was there and that it looked like it was not life-threatening."

Pierce's best friend on the team, Tony Battle, was with him during the stabbing and drove him to the hospital. He saw Pierce at his worst moment, but now, like Pierce, he wants to see and think about only the best.

"It's a blessing that he made it," Battie says. "It just shows that the leprechaun was sitting on his shoulder that night and that the man upstairs was looking down. Physically and mentally now, he's back."

A quick comeback

Less than three weeks after the stabbing, Pierce made it to his first full-contact practice on October 13, his 23rd birthday. When the Celtics' season began November 1, Pierce was on the floor. A month into the season, it's dear Pierce is all the way back. The small forward is the club's leading scorer with a career-high 22.3 points per game, and he has been its most reliable player in the dosing minutes of games.

"People have been awfully surprised at how quickly I came back, at how well I'm doing," Pierce says. "When they look at me, they think, 'He's been through so much in the short period he's been here.'

"when I see someone going through day-to-day small challenges, looking at him, I think, `That's nothing, see what I've been through.' So, hopefully I can be an inspiration that way, and also with my team, with some of the things I've been through off the court. It's not every day you get the opportunity.

"I really don't take things for granted anymore. You just never know when you're not going to be able to play again. After my life flashed before my eyes, it's definitely helped me focus even more, becoming better at doing things on the court as well as off."

For a team that is dependent on Pierce, the Celtics have not just been jump-started by his leadership on the court They are inspired and uplifted by his very presence.

"I consider what happened to Paul to be the luckiest thing to happen to the Boston Celtics in the last 10 years," says Celtics coach Rick Pitino. "To be stabbed six inches in, within one-quarter inch of the heart and to have no rupture of major organs, to be superficially stabbed 10 times, to be suited for the first game of the season, and just being psychologically and physically in great shape, I think it's added a different perspective to his life."

A new outlook

Pierce's inner strength is something Pitino and Williams know as well as anyone. They have been his primary mentors as he has blossomed into the excellent NBA player he is right now. Given the way he has come back from the stabbing, there is no reason to think he cannot reach that potential for greatness.

The only thing that might stop him is an injury, and while Pierce can do little to prevent that on the court, the NBA and Celtics are doing whatever they can to prevent problems off the court. There are whispers Pierce could be attacked again. That's why he has bodyguards not only when he goes out but also when he plays. There is at least one bodyguard near the Celtics' bench at home and, at times, during road games.

A fact of Pierce's life is the threat of death, a highly unsettling piece of knowledge for anyone. For Pierce, who is regarded as one of the nicest and most accommodating players in the game and one who certainly did not lead a lifestyle that could be construed as having courted the kind of attention he got in September, the change is most unusual.

Still, Williams says, Pierce hasn't changed his approach to basketball.

"Even when he had gone into the emergency room and they were telling him how severely hurt he was and then how lucky he was, I'm sure he was having an emotional moment, but as soon as they decided it was not life-threatening, there was never any doubt in his mind he would come back," Williams says.

Now that he is back, Pierce is trying to help turn a team that started 6-6 into a playoff contender. The Celtics didn't reach the post-season in Pierce's first two years in the league.

"(Playing basketball) is what I love to do. It's what I do, so I don't think about the negative things that happened to me because basketball is my life right now. It's what I concentrate on each and every day," Pierce says.

"When I go home, I watch basketball on TV and on nba.com, so it's around me 24 hours. It's easy to keep my mind off other distractions."

It's easy when you've been given a second chance and you don't refuse it.

"Since the stabbing, nothing's really been bothering me," Pierce says. "I think I'm back where I want to be, and I'm just playing ball from here. I'll just try to stay away from small injuries now."

Pierce laughed at his little joke.

That he can laugh at all, never mind play basketball, shoot pool or sing along with Barry White, really is not so funny.

It is exactly what those who know him say it is.

It is a blessing.

Peach of a pair

Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce make the Celtics one of three NBA teams with two players who average more than 20 points a game. In fact, of the top half-dozen scoring duos in the league, Walker and Pierce might be the league's most legitimate 1-2 punch outside of Shaq and Kobe:

1. O'Neal and Kobe Bryant, Lakers (52.7 ppg).

Either can score, and both do. This isn't the Shaq of last season, but Bryant keeps improving.

2. Chris Webber and Predrag Stojakovic, Kings (47.1 ppg).

Stojakovic is one of the league's biggest surprises, but his average wouldn't be as high if Webber hadn't missed time with an ankle injury.

3. Pierce and Walker, Celtics (43.6 ppg).

Like with O'Neal and Bryant, the numbers don't lie. Both players pull their weight, with Pierce at 22.3 and Walker at 21.3. Still, until they win, no one will notice.

4. Vince Carter and Antonio Davis, Raptors (42.9 ppg).

Davis is along for the ride.

5. Jerry Stackhouse and Chucky Atkins, Pistons (42.3 ppg).

Both players' averages will tumble once Joe Smith integrates himself into the offense.

5. Ray Allen and Glenn Robinson. Bucks (423 ppg).

Sure they score but neither one does much else. --Dan Graf

Michael Silverman is a sportswriter for the Boston Herald.

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