After helping a young Wizards team make a splash in the postseason by sinking a pair of miraculous buzzer-beaters (only one of which counted, unfortunately), veteran forward Paul Pierce has moved onto the greener pastures of Los Angeles to team back up with his former coach for one last shot at an NBA title.
But he didn’t leave Washington without making an impression on his teammates, in more ways than one. There’s a lot of wisdom a vet like Pierce can bring into a locker room. He can teach you how to conduct yourself both on and off the court, he can push you to work harder in practice, and he can clue you into all the little tricks of the trade he’s learned over the years.
He can also instill in you a positively old-school ethos about competitiveness that many claim is lacking in the buddy-buddy era of the NBA. One thing that entails is never wearing a rival’s signature sneakers to practice. It’s something Wizards center Marcin Gortat apparently had to learn the hard way, as he told The Washington Post‘s Jorge Castillo at media day on Monday.
Gortat on what he learned from Paul Pierce: “Not to wear LeBron James’s shoes to practice.” He mentioned some other things, too.
— Jorge Castillo (@jorgecastillo) September 28, 2015
Gortat didn’t specify what else he might’ve learned from Pierce, but we’ll just point out that the Polish Hammer’s mohawk from last season was conspicuously absent at the start of training camp.
