BOSTON -- You can't handle the truth.

So goes the famous Jack Nicholson line from the movie "A Few Good Men" and the fourth quarter rallying cry for the Boston Celtics.

In these parts, you can't step inside the "T" subway, meander your way through Boston Common or bird watch at Fanueil Hall without the famed slogan staring you in the face.

They play the clip during the fourth quarter of Celtics games, in part to incite the fans and in part to remind them that the most clutch player in the league, the guy who scored the most fourth-quarter points this past season -- Paul "The Truth" Pierce -- wears green and white.

But Monday night, in Game 4 of the Eastern Conference finals, "The Truth" could barely be stomached.

For when the game was on the line, when his team needed him to bury two free throws with 1.1 seconds left to send the game to overtime, Pierce came up short.

Clank.

"I just went up there and missed the shot," Pierce said. "Game over."

Pierce purposely missed the second free throw and Tony Battie tried to bail his superstar out, getting a hand on the miss and tipping it toward the goal, but his shot, too, fell short. And Pierce, who entered the game averaging 13.3 points in the fourth quarter, was the goat.

Was it a surprise that Pierce missed? To most of the 18,624 in attendance, yes. To the New Jersey Nets? No.

After calling a 20-second timeout to try and ice Pierce, New Jersey coach Byron Scott told his players in the huddle that Pierce was going to come up short. His speech was not about preparing for a last-gasp shot or overtime, instead it was about grabbing the rebound.

"He told us Paul was going to miss," Kenyon Martin said. "We were all sitting there thinking about it, but Byron was the one who came out and said it."

The only Net who thought Pierce was going to make it? Rookie Richard Jefferson. But even his explanation came with a soft hint of sarcasm.

"Sure he's going to make that shot," Jefferson said. "I mean, come on, he's the truth. The truth makes those shots."

It's no guarantee that the Celtics would have won if Pierce sank his two free throws and sent the game to overtime. Boston trailed for the entire game and didn't even tie the Nets until Pierce hit two free throws with 17.6 left to make it 92-92.

But they certainly would have had the momentum, after another double-digit comeback and with a rocking building behind them. But it wasn't meant to be.

Instead, when the final buzzer sounded, there was Pierce, trudging to the Celtics locker room, his sweat-soaked jersey pulled over his shaking head.

"It felt good actually," Pierce said. "I released it. It was straight; I just didn't put enough arc on it. Those are the breaks."

The old Michael Jordan Nike commercial, in which Jordan himself admitted to missing some 70 game-winning shots in his career, would attest to that. Even the greatest of superstars don't always deliver when it counts.

But a free throw? At home? By Mr. Fourth Quarter himself?

Surely, the pressure was enormous. While Lucious Harris' two free throws took a tie game and put the Nets up two, Pierce was down two, needing both shots to send the game to overtime.

Not to mention that an arena that had been rocking and rolling for two-plus hours, fell deathly silent while Pierce took his two dribbles and eyed the unguarded, 15-foot shot. There were no cheers. No chatter. Nothing. The only noise at all came from a handful of fans shushing their neighbors up.

When the ball fell short, you could hear, feel and see the collective gasp.

So will the miss carry over to Game 5? Some thought this series would be a coming out party for the 24-year-old star. Instead, it's been anything but in terms of shooting percentages. Remove his 28-point (19 in the fourth quarter) performance in Game 3, and Pierce is 22-for-60 from the field. At the free throw line, he's made 40 of 63 attempts.

The truth hurts.

"He's alright," Antoine Walker said. "Paul's mentally tough and he just came up short. It's a tough situation. We all love to be in that situation, but when you fail, you hate to be in it. But I' not worried about him at all."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer for ESPN.com.