"I was just so happy to be out there playing," Marbury said. "I was tired, but I found some energy. In the fourth quarter, I guess my legs just forgot what was going on."
No one, least of all Doc Rivers, knew how much Marbury would play, let alone how effective he could possibly be after such a lengthy layoff. But he walked into a situation in which the Celtics were in rather desperate need of a body. No Kevin Garnett. No Tony Allen. Not even a Gabe Pruitt.
"We're just going to throw him out there," Rivers said before the game. "Obviously, minutes will be determined by rhythm of the team, for one, because we don't have a lot of stuff in for Steph, obviously, and then, two, conditioning, because it's one thing to play against me in the gym right now and another thing to go out there on an NBA court."
Marbury played 12 minutes 39 seconds, all but 20 seconds of this total in two significant chunks. He entered the game to a standing ovation with 19.4 seconds remaining in the opening period, the Celtics leading, 26-18, and he remained for a total of 5:08.
On his second touch, he got the attention of the entire Celtics bench, not to mention the sellout crowd of 18,624, when he hit a cutting Leon Powe down the middle of the lane on a beautiful bounce pass that resulted in a pair of free throws.
"Everybody loved it," said Rivers. "It was just an instinctive play only a guard with vision can see."
Let the record show he also connected on his first shot as a Celtic, a left-side 18-footer on a feed from Eddie House.
But his big value came in the fourth quarter when the unit of House, Powe, fellow newcomer Mikki Moore, Marbury, and a smokin' Ray Allen went on a 15-4 run to create some needed space between the Celtics and a gritty Indiana team, which is down two starters (Mike Dunleavy, Danny Granger) but got maximum efforts from such folks as Troy Murphy (20 points, 13 rebounds), T.J. Ford (23 points), and rookie Brandon Rush (17 points).
Marbury had 6 points and an assist in his seven minutes of playing time in the final quarter, and there is no way anyone walking in off the street without prior knowledge of the situation would arrive at any conclusion other than he was a good NBA player.
