In case you missed Paul Pierce, the Boston Celtics legend is back with his curious takes. The NBA is closing the regular season and it's normal to see analysts doing comparisons, predicting the NBA award winners and even selecting the best players in the league. Recently, Paul had this task and as usual, he was controversial.

Pierce, Jalen Rose and Jay Williams selected the 5 best players in the NBA right now and of course, Pierce's list drew a lot of attention and not for good reasons. The 2008 NBA champion selected, in order, Giannis Antetokounmpo, LeBron James, James Harden, Luka Doncic and Kawhi Leonard.

The first thing you notice on this list is that he placed LeBron James as the second-best player in the league, right behind Giannis. This has been an ongoing debate in the league, especially regarding the MVP award. While more people make the case for LeBron every day, there is no doubt that Giannis is the rightful winner of the award.

However, some people consider the MVP award and the best player in the league in the league right now are not the same thing.

Plenty of fans will also see with bad eyes how Kawhi is the 5th best player in the league at this moment, according to Pierce, with Luka Doncic ahead of him.

Well, these lists will always be controversial, but when it involves Paul Pierce and LeBron James, things are bigger. The bad blood between these two is well known and every time Paul has to talk about LeBron, he makes the headlines.

If you take a look at the lists, out of the three former players, the only one who picked LeBron as the best player in the league was Jalen Rose, while Jay Williams also picked Giannis as #1.