It’s common knowledge that Boston Celtics champion forward Paul Pierce didn’t want to be drafted by the team he’d later win a title with in 2008.
Born in Oakland and raised in Inglewood, California, the Kansas product grew up in the shadow of the Los Angeles Forum, and with that — like most of his peers — he became a Lakers fan.
But the basketball gods had other plans for the Californian wing. While Pierce hoped he’d go to the Los Angeles Clippers, he knew they were after a big man (they drafted Michael Olowokandi), he was sure he would at least go second overall.
Speaking on former teammate Ryan Hollins’ “Opinionated 7-Footers” podcast, The Truth revealed his perspective on slipping in the draft that day through some back-room machinations that would change the face of the league.
“I was supposed to go number two to the Vancouver Grizzlies,” explained Pierce. “And that day, I believe that David Falk pulled a power move in the draft because the draft was in Vancouver.”
“He pulled a power move; he went up to the GM, I forgot who the GM was at the time, but it was in Vancouver. And he went up to the office and told them they were going to pick Mike Bibby at No. 2 instead of me. And that caused a domino effect. So, when I didn’t get picked top-two, it was just like, ‘What’s wrong with Paul Pierce?’ I had great workouts. I worked out for the top five teams — I was ready for that.”
“It wasn’t ever going to be a question about work,” he added. “My whole game was built on my work ethic.
Completely unprepared for the slide, Pierce would find himself taken by the one team he’d grown up despising as a teenager.
Paul Pierce credits hard-fouling childhood neighbors for shaping his game https://t.co/rdYVYMf7Mn
— The Celtics Wire (@TheCelticsWire) October 26, 2020
For the Kansas product, it was an ideal landing spot in retrospect — even considering he spent a fair amount of his career stuck on some of the worst Boston teams ever assembled after Antoine Walker and Kenny Anderson exited the scene in the early 2000s.
“So, man, this whole thing has been ironic, just how my career went,” he told the L.A. Times’ Broderick Turner in 2017.
“You’re a Lakers fan and you’re a Boston Celtic and you win a championship in 2008 against the Lakers. It’s just like it was supposed to happen this way.”
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