"By late Wednesday, a team-wide season of ache and injury hung on Paul Pierce's face.

There were bags under the Celtics captain's eyes, and the tone of his voice was worn. His peak years in Green may have reached an end Wednesday night in Miami with the Celtics' Game 5 elimination by the Heat in the Eastern Conference finals.

And that kind of final game is never the memory one wants to take home.

"It's tough having to swallow, with the expectations at the beginning of the year," said Pierce. "You play so hard for the opportunity at a championship, and when you fall short it's very disappointing because you have such high goals. Right now I'm really upset. I wish we could have played better, but we came up on the short end of the stick. Miami really played great basketball. LeBron (James), Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh really led their team. They stepped up when they needed to."

That's another way of saying that his team didn't, that it squandered chances to win in at least three games."