Paul Pierce’s debut campaign with the Washington Wizards surely isn’t going as well as he planned, but that hardly means he’d be better off having re-signed with the Brooklyn Nets.
In an illuminating interview just before his eighth consecutive trip to the playoffs, the future Hall-of-Famer expressed widespread discontent about his time in Brooklyn, even insisting the team “would have packed it in” if not for the presence of he and Kevin Garnett. Here’s Pierce via ESPN’s Jackie MacMullan.
“It was a tough situation (in Brooklyn) last year. Horrible, really.
“It was just the guys’ attitudes there. It wasn’t like we were surrounded by a bunch of young guys. They were vets who didn’t want to play and didn’t want to practice. I was looking around saying, ‘What’s this?’ Kevin (Garnett) and I had to pick them up every day in practice.
“If me and Kevin weren’t there, that team would have folded up. That team would have packed it in. We kept them going each and every day.”
That’s not necessarily surprising. Pierce and Garnett have been known as some of basketball’s most tireless and dedicated workers since they won a championship as Boston Celtics in 2008. Doe to deterioration of their respective games, the duo was meant to bring leadership, camaraderie, and doses of playmaking and defense to the Nets more than anything else.
The way Pierce tells it, he and Garnett were tasked with doing far more than anticipated or risk playing for a loser. Why? Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, and company weren’t mentally equipped to do the heavy lifting that goes hand-in-hand with stardom.
“Before I got there, I looked at Deron as an MVP candidate,” Pierce said. “But I felt once we got there, that’s not what he wanted to be. He just didn’t want that.
“I think a lot of the pressure got to him sometimes. This was his first time in the national spotlight. The media in Utah is not the same as the media in New York, so that can wear on some people. I think it really affected him.”
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“Joe is quiet,” Pierce noted. “He doesn’t want much attention. He doesn’t say much.
“There’s a lot of secondary guys on that team. KG and I went there looking at them as the main guys who would push us, because we were advancing in years. But we ended up doing all the pushing.”
Pierce set himself up for disappointment by expecting Williams to play at the level he did with the Utah Jazz. Injuries have sapped the former All-Star of the quickness and wiggle that made him a devastating playmaker and shot-creator during his early prime, and that was obvious even before Pierce was traded to Brooklyn prior to last season.
But that doesn’t lend any less credence to his displeasure with the squad’s overall commitment level. There was a way the 2013-2014 Nets could have been elite, and it would mean the career performances of Williams, Johnson, and Brook Lopez combined with experience and general nuance ushered in by Pierce and Garnett. Health misfortune and coaching adjustments took a toll on Brooklyn, but the former Celtics still managed to hold up their end of the bargain – it was the younger Nets who failed.
That’s in Pierce’s past now, however. And playing for a team led by young stars John Wall and Bradley Beal with one year left on his contract, there exists a chance for him to add another ring to his resumé before hanging it up for good. We wouldn’t count on that happening, but the chances it does are certainly higher than they’d have been if he stayed in Brooklyn for the final seasons of his storied career.
[ESPN]
