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No Rondo? No problem. Ray Allen goes down in the first half? That’s OK too. Because Paul Pierce showed up on Sunday for the Celtics. Pierce led the C’s with 34 points on the road against the Wizards who were led b y John Wall with 27 points.

“I’m one of our, if not our main scorer on this ballclub,” Pierce said. “That’s my role. I haven’t been doing a good job of it lately, but a lot of that has to do with just being in game shape, getting my legs stronger, being able to get up and down and jump.”

“It’s tough. The last five minutes we were right there,” Wall said. “We’ve got to execute down the stretch.”

Pierce scored 10 straight Celtic points to give Boston the lead at 85-84, a lead they would keep the rest of the way. “At the end of the day, your big players have to step up and play well for you to win, especially games when you have guys out,” Boston coach Doc Rivers said. “And Paul did everything.”

In Miami, the Milwaukee Bucks got a nice road win, led by Brandon Jennings with 23 points. It was the Bucks first road win of the season after going 0-8. “Huge,” said Milwaukee guard Shaun Livingston, Especially for us being winless on the road and going 2-0 against two good teams, especially the quality team like the Heat, it’s huge for your confidence.”

Lebron James led the Heat with 28 points and 13 rebounds. Chris Bosh added 23 for the Heat who were playing their fourth game this week. “We can’t make no excuses for ourselves,” James said. “But no one had energy from the start of the game to the end.”

“We had a great difficulty making shots, but we made up for it with tremendous effort,” Bucks Coach Scott Skiles said. “Our defense was very, very good again. When we needed a couple big plays, we were able to make them.”

Deron Wlliams had 19 points and 10 assists in New Jersey’s 97-87 win over Charlotte Sunday night. MarShon Brooks led the Nets with 20 points and Anthony Morrow also added 19.

“I’ve been shooting a lot of 3s. I’ve been hitting a lot of them so I find myself settling for that shot. I need to be a little bit more efficient,” Brooks said. “Early we made shots. We put up some good numbers today so that was good.”

Kemba Walker led the Bobcats with 16 points “I hope Kemba can continue to play well,” Charlotte coach Paul Silas said. “We saw tonight he really pushed it and was into the game. If we had some of our injured guys here with him tonight, I think we would have a legitimate shot of winning the game.”