Boston Celtics forward icon Paul Pierce has never been modest about his basketball abilities, and former teammate Antoine Walker will happily attest to that fact.
Which he happened to do in a recent interview with Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson on a recent episode of “Heavy On Celtics with Scoop B”, incidentally.
Walker was Pierce’s teammate on the Celtics between 1998 and 2003 and then again in the 2004-04 season, one of the toughest, most winless stretches in Boston’s seven-decade plus history, though not for Walker and Pierce’s efforts.
The team was poorly managed in those years, with a mediocre roster aside from a handful of other players overlapping with the two eventual NBA champions.
The former Employee No. 8 spilled the beans on what The Truth thinks of his skills compared to longtime rival LeBron James’ — which, we might add, is a bold position to take.
At least some of Pierce’s assessment of LeBron is related to his surrounding cast compared to James’, the insinuation being that if the now-Los Angeles Lakers star had remained in Cleveland his whole career he’d have had something closer to Pierce’s hardware showcase.
“Me knowing Paul’s competitive drive, Paul doesn’t believe LeBron’s that much better than him,” said Walker. “And I do believe that.”
“Paul would play him one-on-one every day of the week; I guarantee you that and that’s just the competitor in him. You couldn’t tell me Kobe Bryant wouldn’t play Michael Jordan every day of the week. You know what I mean? It’s kinda that type of thing. I think sometimes with Paul, the way it comes out on TV it seems that way because I remember him commenting about [Dwyane] Wade and people got mad because of what Paul said about D-Wade. Paul believes that he’s in that category.”
“For whatever reason he doesn’t get that notoriety that those guys get. He’s not celebrated like those guys,” opined Walker. “He is that guy.”
Jayson Tatum paid respect to St. Louis icon Lou Brock on his sneakers https://t.co/9L3aNJ5f0U
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) September 8, 2020
At the crux of the matter here is a grain of truth — Pierce would have undoubtedly had a better career had he not remained loyal to Boston and instead left or forced his way off of the team in its worst years — mixed with some Monday morning quarterbacking.
The Truth absolutely should get more respect than he tends to in Greatest of All Time conversations, as well. But we are wearing green-tinted lenses if we try and make the claim that both impacted winning the same way, even in their respective primes.
That said, there’s an excellent case that the Celtics legend is, beyond a doubt, the most clutch player in modern NBA history.
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