Nationally speaking, Pierce was known as a "ballhogging" scorer type, before this year.
Then after these playoffs: defensive stopper, playmaker, and some lights out games (here and there) made him a superstar a.k.a. playoff MVP. Realize, neither KG, Nowitzski, Ray Ray, Karl Malone, VC, etc, are playoff superheroes, only regular season stats packers. And in the case of K Malone, as oppose to Moses Malone (the real thing), his scoring punch was pretty much 50% out of Stockton's feeds.
What Pierce did was everything humanly possible, given the fact that he wasn't the fastest, quickest wingman out there to get the job done. And from that perspective, he's one of the top players in the league today.