Tommy Beer: Vince Carter retires as one of five players in NBA history to score more than 25,000 points, grab more than 5,000 rebounds, dish out more than 4,000 assists and make more than 500 made 3-pointers. The other four are: Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce and LeBron James.
Paul Pierce Rumors
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Paul Pierce
Position: -
Born: 10/13/77
Height: 6-7 / 2.01
Weight:229 lbs. / 104.3 kg.
Earnings: $200,708,312 ($244,878,140*)
Born: 10/13/77
Height: 6-7 / 2.01
Weight:229 lbs. / 104.3 kg.
Earnings: $200,708,312 ($244,878,140*)
2w
“I really, truly believe they can win a title within the next three years,” Pierce said. “Even though we didn’t see (Steph) Curry (or) Klay (Thompson) this year. But you gotta admit — this is probably the best backcourt in all of basketball still. “If they make the right moves … they’re gonna get a nice draft pick that they can probably parlay into a good player, (or maybe) a very good player. All the infrastructure is in place for them to really build a championship team within the next three years.”
If you remember, the Wizards lined up everything to go after Kevin Durant in free agency, including by letting defensive specialist Trevor Ariza leave. Turns out, Wall still wonders ‘what if’ and says he knew Durant wasn’t coming to Washington. “One thousand percent. We still think about that to this day. I feel like that was the biggest piece we lost,” Wall said whether he felt they should have kept Ariza. “We felt like we weren’t getting Kevin, just from knowing everything and thinking ahead. Like, okay we know Kevin’s not coming here so just keep the core we have. We have a great core with Trevor Ariza and all the guys we had. Don’t get me wrong, Paul was great for us. Paul Pierce was great for us, but we just felt like that experience we had with Trevor and the way he was shooting the ball and things and the way he defended, he was the perfect person we needed for LeBron [James]. Even though nobody’s going to stop LeBron, he just made it tough on LeBron.”
What did you think of Paul Pierce not having LeBron James in his all-time Top 5? Kendrick Perkins: I mean, I can’t knock P for who he had, but I don’t know… I think it’s something else there. Like, there’s no way that you can not have LeBron in your Top 5. Now, if you don’t have him as your GOAT, I’m okay with it. But to say that he’s not in your Top 5? Come on, P. I love you to death, my brother, but you’re a little delusional.
02 Jun
“Paul Pierce one time yelled at me in a restaurant,” Rashad says. The story is an old one, from many years ago, when “NBA Inside Stuff” was probably a decade old and Pierce was in his early years in Boston. Pierce saw Rashad out at dinner. He had a pressing question: How come he hadn’t been featured on “Inside Stuff?” “I’ve been doing this for so long!” Rashad recalled Pierce saying. “Why am I not on this show?”
Yet, not everybody is sold on that idea. For instance, if it was up to Pierce, he would give the award to Antetokounmpo without any hesitation (5:55 mark). “You don’t base MVP off of one game like it’s the All-Star game,” Pierce said. “LeBron won the battle (against Giannis), but the war is already won by Giannis. (…) He’s putting historic numbers for a guy his size, he has the best team, a record-wise and the numbers speak for themselves. He’s been dominating all year long, so I take him for MVP and I’ll take LeBron second.”
Celtics legend Paul Pierce recently made waves when he left LeBron James out of his list of the Top 5 greatest players in NBA history. The retired 19-year NBA veteran listed Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, Magic Johnson and Kobe Bryant ahead of James.
Just two years ago, in a round-table interview with Bleacher Report’s Howard Beck, Pierce said that James is “already in the top five” when discussing all-time players. And when asked about James being the only player in NBA history with 30,000 points, 8,000 rebounds and 8,000 assists, Pierce said, “[When] you talk about once-in-a-generation players, he’s definitely there.”
22 May
NBA Central: Paul Pierce says the Miami Heat underachieved in the Big 3 era “They should’ve been 1 and 4.” (🎥 ESPN Countdown) pic.twitter.com/xcWA8IhlA7
What was it like competing against such as a talented offensive player like Iverson? Boston Celtics legend Paul Pierce wasn’t afraid to share his honest thoughts on an episode of ESPN’s “The Jump” last week. “I didn’t match up with him, but I knew I was in situations in pick-and-roll where I switched out on him,” Pierce said. “I’m not gonna lie, I was scared to death — I could play defense and all, but I knew I couldn’t slide my feet with Allen Iverson.”
Paul Pierce: “Every night when you looked at the ‘SportsCenter’ highlights, he was crossing somebody up. All I know is when I switched on him, I was gonna give him that ole defense — I’m gonna let him do his move and I’m gonna let him go. Hopefully I can send him to the baseline because I was not trying to slide my feet with that guy. I didn’t want to end up on anyone’s ‘SportsCenter’ highlights. Period.”
14 May
An upscale Chelsea restaurant owner endangered staffers by letting two former NBA stars smoke weed — then fired a server for refusing to wear Air Jordan high tops due to an ankle injury, a new discrimination suit charges. Former server Admir Cuturic says that Jue Lan Club housed in the old Limelight space was “extremely accommodating” to its “high-end patrons, which include rapper A-Boogie and NBA players Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, allowing them to smoke marijuana in the club regularly despite servers’ repeated protests about the health risks posed to staff,” the suit alleges.
Kendrick Perkins: My Top 5 Small Forwards of All-Time… 1. LeBron James 2. Larry Bird 3. Scottie Pippen 4. Kevin Durant 5. Paul Pierce. Isaiah Thomas: Big homie that SF list is nasty of yours man
Kendrick Perkins: My Top 5 Small Forwards of All-Time… 1. LeBron James 2. Larry Bird 3. Scottie Pippen 4. Kevin Durant 5. Paul Pierce
Yet a small, tight-knit group from that 2008 Celtics team has kept the title connection alive. Twelve years after Boston captured banner No. 17, there remains a regular group-text chain of basketball banter (and other choice topics) between Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, Rajon Rondo, Tony Allen, Doc Rivers, and yes, Kendrick Perkins.
The text chain has survived trades, free-agent signings, reunions gone sour and reunions that never materialized. Consider that at the start of the 2014-15 season, the participants on the chain represented six NBA clubs: Washington (Pierce), Brooklyn (Garnett), Memphis (Allen), Boston (Rondo), Oklahoma City (Perkins) and the LA Clippers (Rivers). Through the years, the chain has endured hurt feelings and periods of silence between individuals who had beef with one another. But, as Pierce said recently, “There hasn’t been a grudge between any of us worth holding on to.” “The guys won’t allow it,” Perkins added.
The text chain can be as simple as checking in about family members and milestones for each other’s kids, or as detailed as potential business opportunities to be considered. The most active texters are the retired players — Garnett, Pierce, Perkins and Allen — who regularly trade insults, and often get together in person in Los Angeles, where each of them has a home except Perkins, though he is regularly in town for his television duties. Garnett talks the most trash; when Perkins retired, he teased his friend on the chain, “What you doing now? Cooking at home wearing an apron?”
Following the Daily News’ report that Lue is interested in the Nets’ coaching job, Richard Jefferson and Paul Pierce were both bullish on the possibilities of a Brooklyn connection. “Ty Lue, definitely — I think he would be a great fit,” Pierce said Tuesday’s on ESPN’s ‘The Jump.’ “Are they going to be a championship caliber team if you put Ty Lue in there and add (Kevin Durant) with Kyrie Irving? Yes. Can they do it? We have yet to see. Or it has yet to happen. But a great fit all across the board, I believe.”
It took one year for Pierce to make the Wizards his team — and it took shorter than that for him to note the group should never have been his at all. Beal, a respecter of elders, hushed in the moment. Once the lecture was over, the 21-year-old headed to the showers. There, the man he calls his favorite teammate ever played the role of therapist. “Brad said, ‘Man, you know, P always talks to us about yada, yada, yada. But he’ll mess around and do the same shit,’” Garrett Temple, who played for the Wizards from 2012 to 2016, told The Athletic. “You know what I’m saying, man?’” Temple’s feedback? Give it right back to Pierce.
“Well, you know, Paul has never been the guy that said, ‘You can’t tell me shit. I’m Paul Pierce. Don’t tell me anything,’” he remembers telling Beal. “He’s the type of guy that if you see him fuck up, he wants you to point it out and get it right. He’s told you and John specifically, y’all are the leaders of this team. “If you see him doing something wrong, as a leader, you have to speak up and point that out. You can’t not do what he said because he’s not doing it himself, necessarily. You have to take what he says and try to understand the message because what he’s saying is right. Now, he might not adhere to it all the time, because he’s human. But if he doesn’t adhere to it, you need to call him out on it. I don’t care if he is Paul Pierce, a first-ballot Hall of Famer.” Beal nodded along. If he disagreed with anything said, he didn’t show it. “I see you,” he responded.
Danielle Trotta: Paul Pierce bounced in 1st round by Zach LaVine. It wasn’t pretty but his backyard def is 😍🌴☀️
Beginning Sunday, April 12 at 7 p.m. ET, Paul, Young, Catchings, Chicago Bulls guard Zach LaVine, three-time WNBA All-Star Allie Quigley of the Chicago Sky, Utah Jazz guard Mike Conley Jr. and NBA Finals MVPs Chauncey Billups and Paul Pierce will match shots against one another in a single-elimination HORSE competition from their respective, isolated home courts. ESPN NBA commentator Mark Jones will serve as the official host.
State Farm will donate more than $200,000 on behalf of the participants to charities focused on coronavirus response efforts. This donation builds on the more than $74 million that has been contributed by the NBA Family to date to support coronavirus relief efforts through its NBA Together campaign. NBA HORSE Challenge Presented by State Farm participants will be divided into two groups of four, with the winners of the first two games in each group meeting in the semifinals. The winner from each group will move on to the championship round. ESPN will present the four quarterfinal games on Sunday. The semifinals and the championship game will air on Thursday, April 16, beginning at 9 p.m. ET.
Garnett said he’s all for a group gathering, but he wants it to be completely sincere and real. “But if Paul, a lot of guys really want to break bread just dealing with the current state [of the world]. I don’t know. I just don’t think you turn it on like that. I don’t think you are it on and off like that, I’m not really big on that,” Garnett said. “I wish Ray all the best in whatever he’s doing. I wished him [well] when he went [into the Hall of Fame], congratulated him, and kept it moving.
Pierce and the Celtics defeated Kobe, Pau and the Lakers in the 2008 Finals. However, the Lakers got their revenge on Pierce and the Celtics in the 2010 Finals, when Bryant, Gasol and Los Angeles defeated the Celtics in seven games. Pierce says Bryant made Gasol tougher and “a Hall of Famer.” “We had four All-Stars,” Paul Pierce told Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson on All The Smoke. “He (Kobe Bryant) had two, he had Pau Gasol, but he toughened Pau Gasol up. Cuz that first Finals, we ran through Pau Gasol. Kobe made him a Hall of Famer.”
02 Apr
Rachel Nichols: If the NBA wants to re-start its season, the league may have to quarantine players in a central location. @RealJayWilliams says using cruise ships could safeguard against anyone breaking isolation. @PaulPierce34 has other ideas: “maybe ask the government if we can use Area 51” 😂
Rachel Nichols: So @PaulPierce34 says he may want in on @TheBig3’s plan to quarantine 16 healthy players in a house, film them Big Brother-style, and have them compete for a seven-figure cash prize. @KendrickPerkins tries to talk him out of it 😂 cc: @IceCube
22 Mar
Paul Pierce moved to Inglewood as a teenager and attended Inglewood High School. Believe it or not, he didn’t make the school’s varsity basketball team initially. But he went on to be the team’s leading scorer and a McDonald’s All-American. “I have a Lakers sweater I used to wear everyday to school,” Pierce remembered. “It was a hoodie. Who could not be a Laker fan? I grew up right down the street from the Forum, right there in Inglewood, watching Magic. I hated the Celtics. You from LA, let alone Inglewood, where the Forum is, of course you’re a Laker fan. How could you not be? So that’s what makes it real ironic when I was drafted to the Celtics.
Bryant and Pierce had a unique relationship, as the former Celtic saw it. “I played mad against everybody, but him,” said Pierce. “We always just had a different type of relationship. I think it was more out of respect too. Everybody else, I pretty much couldn’t care less about. It seemed that way, off the court. Just to have the opportunity to match up with him, know him on-and-off the court was special. It made me who I am, pretty much.”
Pierce made the stunning revelation on the “All The Smoke” podcast Thursday … saying he was a changed man after he nearly lost his life in Sept. 2000 at a night club in Boston. “It was so bad that I couldn’t even like, sleep,” said Pierce, who was 22 years old and just entering his third season with the Celtics at the time … “I had to have a 24-hour police surveillance in my house, that’s how paranoid I was.” He added, “It changes you, dude. You don’t know where to go, you don’t know who to look at, you on your toes. You’re like really on your toes, like, ‘Man, I’ll kill somebody.'”
“People don’t know this, but I actually carried a gun for two years right after that,” Pierce said. “I was so paranoid. Like, I kept it in the car, I had it on me, I was so paranoid after that. I was just like, I couldn’t be in crowds. Something like that happens to you, man, it’s traumatic.”
The rift remains a spicy topic among NBA fans, and during a recent appearance on the All The Smoke Podcast hosted by former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Pierce explained why he had an issue with Allen in the first place and how he feels about his former teammate today. “This is my whole deal with Ray. One, he went to our rival,” Pierce said. “LeBron James was a rival of the Celtics, regardless if he was in Cleveland or Miami. Those were some of the [most] heated matchups. It was just like ‘damn, they just beat us, and then you’re going to go over there.'” “Two, I was calling him when [the Celtics] were in the middle of contract negotiations before he left. He’s not answering anybody’s calls and I’m hearing he’s talking about going to Miami. He’s not returning my call. I just feel like as a certain respect as a teammate, as a brother, we can have this conversation. If you’re not wanting to play with us no more, at least let us know something. But to just don’t say nothing to us and to just get up and go over there, I felt that was a slap in the face or disrespect from a brother. So that was my whole beef with him. Since then, me and him have talked, I smoothed things over with him. But initially, as a brother, somebody you’ve been through things with, I felt it was disrespectful.”
The rift remains a spicy topic among NBA fans, and during a recent appearance on the All The Smoke Podcast hosted by former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson, Pierce explained why he had an issue with Allen in the first place and how he feels about his former teammate today. “This is my whole deal with Ray. One, he went to our rival,” Pierce said. “LeBron James was a rival of the Celtics, regardless if he was in Cleveland or Miami. Those were some of the [most] heated matchups. It was just like ‘damn, they just beat us, and then you’re going to go over there.'” “Two, I was calling him when [the Celtics] were in the middle of contract negotiations before he left. He’s not answering anybody’s calls and I’m hearing he’s talking about going to Miami. He’s not returning my call. I just feel like as a certain respect as a teammate, as a brother, we can have this conversation. If you’re not wanting to play with us no more, at least let us know something. But to just don’t say nothing to us and to just get up and go over there, I felt that was a slap in the face or disrespect from a brother. So that was my whole beef with him. Since then, me and him have talked, I smoothed things over with him. But initially, as a brother, somebody you’ve been through things with, I felt it was disrespectful.”
Boston Celtics’ legend Paul Pierce is stocking up during this Coronavirus scare.
The Wizards went 1-2 without Wall in the series, and their only win came on Paul Pierce’s epic buzzer-beater in which he “called game.” Wall was sorely missed, and when he came back he obviously wasn’t the same player since, you know, he was playing with one hand. “John’s injury changed everything,” he said. “He tried to play through that injury but you can’t play with one hand. That’s crazy, and he was still trying to do it.”
Tom Westerholm: Paul Pierce is in the house for Celtics vs. Rockets.
Mark Medina: Others in building: Jeanie Buss, Phil Jackson, Shaq, Jerry West, Alex Rodriguez, Jennifer Lopez, Rick Fox, Dwyane Wade, Russell Westbrook, Paul Pierce
