Paul Pierce still remembers standing alone in the UCLA gym four summers ago, ball in hand, a good 20 feet away from the hoop. He'd square and rise up, snap his right wrist crisply, release the ball and shout, "Michael Olowokandi!" Swish. Then he'd take a few steps to the left and repeat the drill, rising, shooting the J, this time shouting, "Mike Bibby!" Swish. And on he'd go, around the court, in this order: Raef LaFrentz! Swish. Antawn Jamison! Swish. Vince Carter! Swish. Robert Traylor! Swish. Jason Williams! Swish. Larry Hughes! Swish. Dirk Nowitzki! Swish.

It's a drill he perfected to prepare for his rookie season, a reminder of the nine players drafted ahead of him. He doesn't use it much now, but it's still there, tucked away in his mind. Call it his personal motivational tool. Pierce had been told he'd go as early as No.2, certainly in the top five. Sitting in the green room in Vancouver that late-June night in 1998, his mom, two brothers and high school coach beside him, he heard one name after another called ahead of his. Pierce felt like the fat kid in gym, the last one picked when choosing sides for basketball.

"The draft left a bitter taste, a very bitter taste," he says. "I wanted to do something to motivate me, something to keep me hungry. I didn't want to forget what happened."

There's another night Pierce wants to forget -- and can't. The reminders are right there on his chest and back, the ugly brown welts left by the knives that were plunged into his torso during a fight in a Boston nightclub just before training camp last year. And there are the scars around his right eye, where the bottle broke. "These are my tattoos now," says Pierce, who routinely covers his chest with a towel when dressing and undressing in the Celtics locker room. "They're here for life."

Ironic, isn't it, that a guy who felt so overlooked feels the need to cover up? Yet it's hard to look past Pierce now. Not when he's battling for the league lead in scoring while playing an old-school floor game reminiscent of, dare we say, Larry Legend. Not when he's earned the nickname The Truth from none other than the Big Aristotle. And certainly not when he's making us pay attention to the Celtics again. No, some things you just can't overlook.

***

Ask Pierce where he'd rate as an athlete on an ascending scale of 1 to 10, and he'll say a 7. A sturdy 6'6", 230 pounds, he can throw it down, but he's not a highlight film around the basket. He can shoot, but don't look for him to win the three-point competition at the All-Star Game. He's the kind of player who beats you however he can, the kind you think is having an off night until you look up and see he's scored 30. The kind who always thinks his next shot is his best.

"To tell you the truth, I feel like I'm in the zone every game, no matter if I'm making shots or missing shots," says Pierce. "I feel like every shot I take will go in."

How else can you explain what happened against the Nets on Dec.1? Boston came into the Meadowlands on a roll, having won back-to-back road games in Miami and Orlando. Pierce hit the game-winner against the Heat, a buzzer-beating layup that brought his teammates rushing onto the court as if they'd won the championship. Two nights later, he had 26 points and 12 rebounds to outduel Tracy McGrady.

So when Pierce hit his first shot against the Nets, the team the Celtics were suddenly chasing for first place in the Atlantic Division, he had every right to expect good things. Then he missed his next shot, then missed again. And again. By the time the first half ended, he'd missed 15 straight shots, and the Celtics were down 14.

But the only way to score is to keep shooting, right? So Pierce opened the second half shooting -- and missing, running his streak to 16. Then everything changed. Two free throws, then a three-pointer. Then another. And another. Dunks, jumpers and a steady trek to the free throw line became a 33-point surge that pushed the game into overtime; 13 more gave Boston the win. Pierce's line for the second half and OT: 46 points on 12-for-18 shooting-5-for-5 from three-point range -- and 17 of 18 from the line.

It was the kind of performance that must make the teams that passed on Pierce wince. An All-America at Kansas, Pierce entered the draft after his junior year labeled a "complete player." He worked out for the Clippers, Grizzlies, Nuggets, Raptors and Warriors, who had the top five selections. The Celtics, picking 10th, looked at tapes and made a few calls, but figured he'd be gone when it was their turn to go to the podium.

"There was a chain of events, and if any one of them doesn't occur, we're screwed," says Celtics GM Chris Wallace. "First, Kansas lost to URI in the second round of the NCAAs when Paul didn't play very well. Then he had so-so workouts. And then the new guys in town showed up -- Jason Williams, Robert Traylor and Dirk Nowitzki -- and pole-vaulted into the top 10. We had Paul in the top four. The great thing was we had no time to outsmart ourselves. When it was our turn, there wasn't a decision to make."

Pierce saw it all from a different perspective: "I kept saying, 'Who is this guy in front of me?' I was supposed to go at No. 2, and once they picked Mike Bibby it was like, 'Okay, I'll go to Golden State.' When they didn't pick me I started to feel I was lost in the shuffle. I looked at the chart and said, 'Okay, Philadelphia -- Larry Brown, he's a Kansas guy. Got to go there.' Then they said, 'Larry Hughes,' and all I could think was, 'Not Boston!' I'd heard the stories about Rick Pitino and how guys were falling down in training camp, guys on IVs and all that."

Pierce survived his first season under Pitino, finishing third behind Carter and JWill for Rookie of the Year. He followed that with 19.5 ppg and 5.4 rpg, finishing second in the league in steals. The true breakout came last season. Playing all 82 games despite the stabbing incident, Pierce became the first Celtic to score 2,000 points since Bird in 1988; his 25.3 average was eighth in the league. He excelled at drawing fouls, setting a team record for free throw attempts (738).

"He would absolutely fit in with the Celtic teams I coached," says Red Auerbach, newly reinstated as team president at age 84. "He's the whole package, offensively and defensively. He's respectful and he doesn't bitch. Old-fashioned. I really like him."

The full force of Pierce's talents was evident last March. Free of Pitino's micromanaging, he averaged 30.3 points, 7.2 rebounds and 3.4 assists -- including back-to-back 42s and that nickname from Shaq -- to lead a late Boston playoff run that fell five games short.

"Guys don't have to look over their shoulders as much anymore," he says of life after Rick. "You had 15 grown men who looked at the coach and asked, 'I'm making just as much money as the coach, why is he yelling at me?' It was a slap in the face. You get to this level and you feel like the coach should talk to you like an adult. A lot of players didn't feel that way with Coach Pitino."

With Pitino in Louisville and the Celtics on a roll, people in Boston are starting to believe. Pierce and good friend Antoine Walker, the highest-scoring tandem east of the Staples Center, can dominate a game. They appear to have a reliable third option in shooting guard Joe Johnson, one of Boston's three first-round draft picks. And the players have responded to coach Jim O'Brien, winning 18 of 35 road games since the former assistant took over for Pitino last Jan. 8.

Good signs abound. Boston followed the Nets win with another in Toronto, winning four straight road games for the first time since '93. And it's not all Pierce and Walker. The Celtics held the Raptors to nine points in the fourth quarter, a fitting end to four games in which they held their opponents to sub-40% shooting.

"We're learning," says Pierce. "We're starting to realize what it takes and we're going out there, executing, doing what we have to do to win ball games. Hopefully, it will carry over for the rest of the season."

***

Sunday night had yielded to Monday morning, Sept. 25, 2000, when Pierce walked into a private party at the Buzz Club/Europa in Boston. The main event was a Hair Show, featuring a parade of young women and hair stylists showing off new coifs. Standing near a pool table, a couple of women noticed Pierce and whispered to each other. Pierce told them they didn't need to whisper. According to prosecutors, he was immediately jumped by three men he didn't know. All three were charged with a variety of offenses, the most serious being armed assault with intent to murder; the case has not yet gone to court. William Ragland, one of the men charged, has since been sentenced to 21 to 25 years in prison for an unrelated conviction.

"It just happened so fast," says Pierce, "that after it was over, I didn't even realize I'd been stabbed. I know I never went to the ground. I said to myself that if I go to the ground, it's gonna be all over."

He suffered lacerations from the bottle that was cracked over his head, and multiple stab wounds to the neck, face and back, the most dangerous penetrating his abdomen, diaphragm and lung. Death has claimed two Celtic first-round picks since 1986 (Len Bias of cocaine intoxication and Reggie Lewis of cardio arrhythmia), and for a few hours it looked like Pierce might be the third. Doctors said the leather jacket Pierce was wearing may have saved his life.

Pierce's half-brother, Steve Hosey, and Celtics center Tony Battie's brother, Derrick, got him to New England Medical Center, and he staggered into the hospital, bleeding profusely. The doctors decided to use laparoscopic surgery, sparing him more invasive procedures that probably would have ended his season. Thankfully, he was on the court practicing on Oct. 13, his 23rd birthday. He still has some numbness where the bottle cracked his head, and he sometimes feels pain beneath his ribs on his left side where the knives cut deepest.

The lesson?

"You have to watch your back," Pierce says. "We're targets. I'm more aware of where I'm going and who I'm with. People know who you are and are jealous of you, so things like this happen."

Pierce is a stay-home kind of guy who avoided the gangs and other temptations growing up in Inglewood, Calif. He wasn't above fighting with high school teammates who weren't playing hard -- he had fistfights with six in his senior year -- but to those who know him, Pierce was the last guy who'd end up in headlines with the word "stabbing." He's still close to Inglewood High assistant coach Scott Collins, a cop whom Pierce considers a surrogate father. He donates to charities, speaks at schools and talks to his mom, for whom he bought a house in Inglewood, several times a day.

Pierce hired a bodyguard last year, a former Boston cop who would sit at the end of the Celtics bench, home and away, and park outside Pierce's house at night. The full-time guard is gone now, but Pierce and Walker still get part-time help for some outings.

"Something like this definitely changes you as a person," Pierce says. "Laying on that hospital table, I wondered: Am I gonna live? Am I gonna die? It's like a rebirth. I changed the way I approach each day. I changed the way I treat friends. Life is short. If I had died that day, I would've had a lot of regrets. You don't want to go out like that."

***

The official part of practice is over and players have broken off into groups of two to practice free throws. Pierce and Walker work at one basket with assistant coach Lester Connor, while Kenny Anderson and Erick Strickland shoot with assistant coach Dick Harter at another. You can't finish the drill until you make your last five, and there's a lot of chirping going down. Walker meets his quota, then Strickland, leaving Pierce and Anderson in competition.

The ante is upped. Now it's five straight without catching iron.

"One, two, three, four, five -- swish, swish, swish, swish, swish!" Pierce yells, raising his arms and running the length of the court. He didn't call anyone's name after each shot this time. He doesn't need to do that anymore.

Dan Shaughnessy is a columnist for The Boston Globe.

This article appears in the December 24 issue of ESPN The Magazine.