In a recent player survey covering a wide range of topics, a questionable inclusion was made about the NBA’s greatest athlete ever: Paul Pierce. The Celtics legend shockingly received a single vote in the survey and he believes that the vote may belong to none other than LeBron James.
“What if LBJ voted for me? I did play against him,” said Pierce. “He must think something. What do you think about that? We had a lot of battles. Come on now, we had some tough battles. It could’ve been LeBron James, it doesn’t have to be somebody from the Celtics!”
"Sometimes it’s not always everything you do on the court, but off the court too that makes you the GOAT." – Paul Pierce pic.twitter.com/hdghpDbv4A
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 24, 2024
Fans were pretty quick to shoot down the idea and even Pierce’s co-hosts on Undisputed found the idea laughable. Even so, Pierce did not back down on his take and offered his own argument for why he should be part of the GOAT conversation.
“They knew if I had better players around me when I was younger, I probably would have won about five or six championships too… Who else would you think should be in the conversation?” Pierce said. “Come on now.”
Say what you want about the Truth, but his status as an NBA legend is undeniable. Over 19 years in the NBA, he was a 10x All-Star, 4x All-NBA player, NBA champion, and Finals MVP. He averaged 21.8 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 3.9 assists per game on 44% shooting. He helped to carry the Celtics during one of their most prosperous periods and he was one of the NBA’s featured stars of the 2000s.
Unfortunately for Pierce, he’s not anywhere near the GOAT discussion. As good as his resume is, it pales in comparison to the achievements of LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, and various other players who have a better case for being the greatest player ever. As for who voted for Pierce in the recent player poll, nobody knows the name, but it’s almost surely not LeBron James, considering his long and bitter history with the Celtics legend.
LeBron James And Paul Pierce Had A Vicious Rivalry
Paul Pierce knows more than anyone how complicated his past with the King is. While they’ve always shared a level of mutual respect, their success has often come at the detriment of the other. As two superstar wing players on great teams, Pierce and James clashed over the East for years, and things got pretty intense while they were in their primes together.
The heart of their rivalry came in the postseason, where the pair met a total of five times over several years. Pierce and his Celtics won the first two series and they were considered the better team for most of LeBron’s original run with the Cleveland Cavaliers. When Pierce won the championship in 2008 it was the first time that he could claim superiority over James and he relished every second of it.
When they met again two years later, Pierce’s Celtics again came out victorious and it would be their last stand as a true title-contending team. When they met again the next season, LeBron was a member of the Heat, and their “big three” easily dispatched Pierce and his crew in just five games.
LeBron would go on to make the next eight straight Finals, and Pierce’s Celtics would slowly decline and fade from relevancy as they aged out of the NBA. Today, after all those years, Pierce still considers LeBron one of the great villains of his career, and he believes he deserves more credit for the fight he was able to give during his best years with the Celtics.
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