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| Thursday, January 4 Pierce, Walker can't forget the violence By David Aldridge Special to ESPN.com |
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The nightmares come infrequently. But they still come. "I keep my mind off of it," Paul Pierce says. "Basketball, being around my family, not talking about it. And when I'm on the court, I never think about the incident. It's tough, day in, day out, not to think about it, or dream about it. I'm not gonna lie. I have. And I wake up and I see the different scars on my body, it's hard not to think about it." A new year always brings resolutions, promises to do better, and thankfulness for past opportunities. This new year must be especially poignant for Pierce and Antoine Walker, teammates in more than wearing the colors of the Boston Celtics. They are members of a smaller, less desirable team. Last summer, both came within seconds of losing their lives to violence. In the early morning hours of July 1st, Walker and Sixers forward Nazr Mohammed were sitting in front of a Chicago restaurant that had yet to open when three men with guns surrounded them and robbed them of cash and a $55,000 watch Walker was wearing. No suspects have ever been arrested. On Sept. 25, Pierce was stabbed multiple times at a Boston nightclub after getting in an altercation with the brother of a woman with whom he was speaking. He was hit in the head with a bottle and stabbed multiple times in the neck, chest and back. He underwent lung surgery to repair the damage. An inch or so in another direction and he would have died. Three suspects in Pierce's stabbing await trial.
"It was a shock," Pierce said. "I didn't realize how badly hurt I was until after the incident, and the doctors told me what was going on, what happened to me. I didn't realize how much my life was in danger until after it was all over with." Walker wasn't injured, but he was shaken up. One of the young men who robbed him seemed more nervous than he was. "It happened, I would say, between 30 and 45 seconds," Walker said. "Three guys pointing guns at you, your life flashes in front of you. It bothered me for like a month, a month straight. It really bothered me to where I always thought about it. That was the first time I actually ever had a gun pointed right at my chest, so it was kind of hard for me to deal with at first." Obviously, each has leaned on the other for support. The two were already pretty close. Now they're closer. "We talked about it for a long time," Walker said. "When you're in the limelight, and people put you on that high pedestal that sometimes you don't want to be on, you've got to have some kind of protection to a certain degree. Obviously, you're going to have nice things. You're going to drive the fancy cars, you're going to wear nice looking clothes, you're going to have nice jewelry. And a lot of people in the world are envious of that."
Both men now, grudgingly, use bodyguards. But Walker admits he tries to shed his protection on occasion. And he plans to keep returning to his hometown in the summer. "I know a lot of people in Chicago," Walker says. "They made it a lot easier. There was a lot of people more hurt than I was. A lot of people, guys in the street, they didn't like it. They don't know who did it, but they didn't like it as well, and that made me feel a lot better. They feel like I'm one of the guys out of the hood that's made it, and been successful, and they want me to be able to come back. I know a lot of guys from Chicago that don't come back no more, for whatever reason." Pierce has obviously cut way back on his outside activities. He stays at home a lot more. "I don't think I'm the type of person that brings trouble my way," Pierce said. "But anything can happen to anybody at any given time." Even though the Celtics continue to struggle, both Pierce and Walker have had strong seasons. Pierce is posting career highs in scoring (23.3 points per game entering play Wednesday), rebounds (5.9) and assists (3.3). Walker is only shooting 41 percent from the floor, but his 9.9 boards are the most he's posted in three seasons and he's cut his turnovers down some. It's not inconceivable that both could be Eastern Conference all-stars next month in Washington. Which would help some. But they'll never forget their harrowing experiences. "I'm from the inner city," Walker says. "Paul's from the inner city. We've seen a lot. You see a lot of different things, so a lot of things don't faze you. You see things and they go right through you. You don't really think twice about it. Getting robbed, guys jumping on you, you never think that can happen to you. That kind of opens your eyes. I think you see it happen to certain individuals. Like I never thought I could get robbed in my own city. It's very hard to think that way until it actually happens to you. And then it kind of opens your eyes to the real world and lets you know you're very vulnerable to a lot of things out here."
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Meanwhile, Charlotte's starters are still going pretty well. The David Wesley-Baron Davis backcourt has been terrific. "David's so confident now," Silas says. "Every shot he takes looks like it's going in." Silas got the idea of playing the two point guards together from an earlier coaching life. "I remembered when we played (Rod) Strickland and Mark Jackson back when I was in New York," Silas says. "I tried to get the coach (Stu Jackson) to do it more often. The little time we did play them together, they'd go out of their way to look for each other and make each other look good, because they didn't want the competition. And that's what's happened here."
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