Finals turn flaky

BOSTON – Oh, splendid. This is what any NBA Finals can use – a good conspiracy theory.

We could get all bogged down about how Kobe Bryant missed so many shots the other night, has to do better next time, and intends to. “I get those again,” he said Friday, “I’m foaming at the mouth. I want those looks again.”

Enough of the routine basketball. Let’s get to the skullduggery.

In the matter of Paul Pierce’s right knee, it still hurt Friday. Had there been a game, he said, he could not have played, though he is not exactly sure of the damage because he is bloody well not going to get an MRI until this is over. The theory is, what you don’t know can’t stop you.

This is all pertinent because in the wake of Game 1 – when Pierce left the court in agony and was back in less time than it takes to boil an egg to rain 3-pointers down upon the Lakers – there has been conversation about how badly he was truly hurt.

The suspicion comes because Pierce left the court looking dazed as if he had just been taken out of a train wreck, and was back in two minutes looking as if he was ready for the Boston Marathon. He mentioned Thursday night he felt like an angel had intervened to get him back into the game. That, and four Advils.

“I don’t know if the angels visited him … but he didn’t even limp when he came back out on the floor,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson said Friday. “Was Oral Roberts back there in their locker room?”

Not without a pass, he wasn’t. But about that miracle cure …

Answered Pierce, “I don’t know what to say.”

It looked to most people like he was in genuine pain. If not, the emoting performance would have made Denzel Washington proud. Or maybe it was partly fear. A potentially wrecked knee can put anguish on a man’s face 30 minutes into his first NBA Finals.

“Man, I was scared,” Pierce said Friday. “The worst came to mind.”

It did to Bryant, too, who is an opponent but also a friend. “I was happy to see him come out there,” Bryant said, “until he made those two damn 3s.”

But let’s not kill off any potential bickering between the two teams. A little rancor can go a long way in keeping a long series interesting. You think the old Celtics and Lakers got along like clams?

“It’s not up to them to approve or disapprove or to judge,” Kevin Garnett said Friday of the Lakers doubts about Pierce. “When you don’t know what’s going on on the other side, you just make stuff up.”

The issue was also taken to Celtics coach Doc Rivers for a rebuttal.

“Oh, I don’t care,” he said. “Aren’t we skeptics anyway now about everything? So what the heck, let it begin. Lee Harvey Oswald did it.”

But what of an angel being in Pierce’s pocket? Derek Fisher, a devout Laker, seemed the guy to ask.

“I don’t know how much we can comment on what he experienced,” he said. “I believe that obviously there is a divine being … maybe Paul does too.”

So all these New Englanders might be right in the end? God might be a Celtics fan?

“I think He has bigger problems to worry about,” Fisher said, “as opposed to who wins the NBA Finals.”

This must be said. It’s a very promising series when Oral Roberts, Lee Harvey Oswald and divine intervention have already been worked into the conversation, and we’re not even to Game 2.