Six years ago today, Paul Pierce’s block helps the Brooklyn Nets advance

The Brooklyn Nets battled a hostile crowd in Game 7 of the first round in Toronto and ended up with the victory as Paul Pierce came up clutch.

On May 4th, 2014, the Brooklyn Nets, coming off a huge Game 6 victory at home a couple of days earlier, traveled north of the border with hopes of extending their season.

Although it’s still looked at as a bad trade in hindsight, the Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett trade would definitely have been looked at as even more of a colossal failure if they were to lose to an inexperienced Toronto Raptors team despite them having the better record.

In the final seconds of that Game 7, however, Pierce let his actions do the talking and shut down the notion that the trade was a bad one, as he swatted away Kyle Lowry‘s layup attempt at the rim as time on the game clock ran out to give the Nets a 104-103 win.

The Raptors had 6.2 seconds to work with on the game clock to get the shot they wanted, and to their credit, they executed it almost perfectly, as it drew three defenders up top to try and trap Lowry, but Lowry was able to dribble through that traffic to get an easy look at the rim.

One of the defenders that was forced up top? That would be the former Defensive Player of the Year in Garnett, as the screen up top forced Garnett to switch onto Lowry. That forced Pierce, who didn’t get his nickname as “The Truth” for his rim-protecting abilities, to serve as the last line of defense.

In those last couple of seconds, I remember thinking that the Nets were done for, and Lowry had them all beat.

Thankfully, Pierce timed everything perfectly and allowed the Nets to move on to the second round of the playoffs.

Joe Johnson led the Nets with 26 points, Garnett had 12 points and 11 rebounds and Pierce finished with 10 points.