Video: Pierce finds out about Rondo's injury on national televison


It’s not every day you get to see a professional athlete find out one of his or her teammates suffered a serious injury on national television. Well, unfortunately in Boston, Sunday was one of those days.

After the Celtics’ double overtime victory over the Heat, ESPN’s Doris Burke broke the news to Paul Pierce that Rajon Rondo was diagnosed with a season-ending ACL tear. In the video above you can’t really make out what Pierce says at first, but it sounds like, “Oh my God.”

Pierce then gives a grimace and tries to fumble through the answer about what happens now with the veteran response of “guys have to step up.”

During the game as the news broke Burke was trying to find out if the players knew about Rondo’s injury, well now she knows. They didn’t.

Doc Rivers said he knew about the seriousness of the injury before the game even started, but it looks like he withheld that info to keep the guys focused on the game. And it worked, they won.

ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan reported Dwyane Wade found out about it from her as the game was going on. Either Wade told the Boston players and they didn’t believe him or he and the rest of the Heat kept it to themselves.

If they did hide it from the Celtics then good on them, I’m sure it must have been tempting as the game entered the first and second overtime to throw out a “hey, you guys lost your star player for the rest of the year” to try and throw Boston off of its game.

However the news was broke to the rest of the team, as candid a moment as it was, it sucks Pierce had to find out about his friend with a camera in his face and millions of people watching.

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