Paul Pierce tends to raise eyebrows whenever he opens his mouth, and the Boston Celtics legend was at it again recently. During an appearance on the It Is What It Is podcast, Pierce once again claimed he was a better player than Dwyane Wade.
Pierce felt that Wade had better teammates than him which is why he won more rings and argued his game was just better. Wade’s former teammate Udonis Haslem didn’t take too kindly to those comments, to say the least.
“These podcast have muhf***as getting diarrhea out the mouth!!!!”
Udonis Haslem calls out Paul Pierce
(h/t @5ReasonsSports ) pic.twitter.com/wmjbH5uFQz
— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) July 22, 2023
Considering Pierce has made such claims a couple of times now, it perhaps isn’t surprising that Haslem finally chose to lash out. This is far from the only time he has gone after Pierce, as he had blasted him and Kevin Garnett last year for criticizing the Miami Heat. There’s absolutely no love lost here after their battles in the playoffs over the years, and it’ll be interesting to see if Pierce responds to Haslem.
Does Paul Pierce Really Have A Case Here?
The general consensus certainly is that Wade was better than Pierce, but does the Celtics legend have any sort of case?
The short answer to that would be no. The only areas where Pierce can claim superiority are three-point shooting, 36.8% for his career compared to 29.3% for Wade, and rebounding, 5.6 RPG to 4.7 RPG.
At everything else, Wade was just better. He was a better scorer, despite not being a great shooter, averaging 22.0 PPG for his career compared to 19.7 PPG for Paul, and did lead the league in scoring once, something Pierce never did. Wade was also a better playmaker, averaging 5.4 APG to Pierce’s 3.5 APG.
He was also a better defender, making the All-Defensive Second Team on three occasions, while Pierce never made it in even once. Wade also holds the edge with eight All-NBA selections (three first team) to just four for Paul (zero first team) and the more you look at their accomplishments, the wider the gap gets.
Pierce was still certainly a great player, but he just wasn’t better than Wade.
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