Eighteen years into his NBA career, it appears future Hall of Famer Paul Pierce isn’t quite ready to go out yet. According to Los Angeles Times Clippers beat writer Ben Bolch, Pierce will be back for another go-around in 2016-2017.
Nothing official, but person close to Paul Pierce says he intends to play next season.
— Ben Bolch (@latbbolch) July 9, 2016
Not terribly specific, but it’s something. Just last month, Pierce was dipping his toe into the broadcasting waters as a guest commentator during pregames and halftimes of ABC and ESPN’s coverage of The Finals. He also appeared on other ESPN shows, most notably Rachel Nichols’s daily series The Jump, on which Pierce sat with fellow bygone greats Vince Carter and Tracy McGrady and watched McGrady pour one out when Nichols asked “The Truth” about the current status of his career plans.
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Pierce signed a three-year deal with the Clippers last July, reuniting him with former Celtics coach Doc Rivers. The two won a championship together in 2008 and came within about half a quarter of doing it again two years later. The 38 year old saw his numbers decline in a precipitous way last season, averaging career lows in minutes, field goal attempts, usage rate, and PER — among other stats — by a wide margin.
He said last summer that he’d been mulling retirement after his previous team, the Washington Wizards, were knocked out of the playoffs. But he wound up signing with the Clippers and noted that he’d “probably retire” if they were to win a title. Perhaps the feeling of getting booted out of the playoffs in the first round following injuries to both Chris Paul and Blake Griffin got to him.
The Clippers, after being rebuffed early on in the Kevin Durant recruitment process, have brought back most of their roster from last year already, save for backup center Cole Aldrich, so having Pierce along for one more ride kind of makes sense. How much the former Finals MVP has left to give is anyone’s guess.
