The mark of a borderline-washed-up 35-year-old is only playing that way when you absolutely have to — like when it’s Game 7 of the NBA Finals and you’re called upon for a rare start in a critical moment.
For Rasheed Wallace, Game 7 of the NBA Finals was a tantalizing one. Wallace gave the Celtics 11 points, eight rebounds and relentless physicality on the defensive end against Pau Gasol. It was a great performance, but it made you wonder — why can’t he always play like this?
After the game, we might have gotten our answer out of Doc Rivers.
“You know, I don’t know if Rasheed will ever play again,” the Celtics coach said. “I think he took that out on the floor with him. I think he is thinking about retiring, and I thought you could see that in his play.”
So there you have it. Maybe Wallace was playing like it was his last game because it was.
There was no official comment from Wallace after the game. Last we heard from him, he was lurking outside the officials’ locker room in the wake of the Celtics’ Game 7 loss, asking to speak with referee Danny Crawford. “I just wanna talk,” he insisted before security sent him away.
Wallace has been through 15 years in this league — 15 difficult years packed with referee unpleasantries, clashes with coaches and teammates and inconsistent play in his latter years. It’s been a rocky road, but along the way he’s won a ring (in 2004, with the Detroit Pistons) and been tabbed four times as an All-Star.
Did everything really end with a Game 7 loss in Los Angeles on Thursday night? We can’t know for sure. The emotions of losing a Finals Game 7 can be taxing, and no one knows that better than Wallace, the only active player to do it twice. Maybe he’s still deliberating. Maybe a final decision is still a ways off. Maybe we’re in for a Brett Favre-type saga in the coming months.
But one thing we do know is that Wallace left it all on the floor in Game 7.
“He was dying out there,” said Rivers. “When he got the cramps and the strains, he was just trying to figure out a way of staying on the floor. We had to keep subbing him for one minute and two minutes.
“But I thought the reason we got up early was because of Rasheed Wallace. We got it low in the post, he started scoring, and I thought what happened was late in the game he got tired and had the injuries and we couldn’t go down anymore, and I think that had a huge impact on how we were playing. We had to go away from the post almost because of fatigue. You know, it’s the first time all year that you can actually say we were old at the end of the game, because we didn’t have a enough bodies. I thought it hurt us.”
Wallace was given the start for Game 7 at the last minute, stepping in for the injured Kendrick Perkins. He was battling injury woes of his own — back pain had been an issue for him all month — but he was forced to play through it.
Next year, though, Perkins will be back. Kevin Garnett and Glen Davis will be around as well, and Wallace could decide the Celtics don’t need his services in the fall of 2010. After 15 seasons, he could hang it up now.
No one in the Celtics’ locker room was willing to refute that.
“Not a good one,” Garnett said of the Wallace situation. “I see a lot myself in him, and we have a lot of the same ties and a lot of the same characteristics. Both Class of ’95. So for him to come in and give his thanks and his regards after a loss like this, it was a difficult night.”
It’s always difficult to lose in the Finals. But to do it in a pivotal season like this, when the past was so fulfilling yet the future is so uncertain, is even worse. The Celtics don’t know what will happen going forward, but they’re just hoping for the best.
“It would be great to have everybody back here,” said Garnett.
We shall see, Kevin. We shall see.
