April 18, 2015


Wizards' Paul Pierce speaks the truth (Jackie MacMullan, 4/14/15, ESPNBoston.com)

 "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.''

The player that puzzled him the most, said Pierce, was point guard Deron Williams.

"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 talk to them a lot about mental preparation and consistency,'' Pierce said. "I keep telling Wall and Beal, 'You've got to make up your mind. Do you want to be good, or do you want to be great? Because if you want to be great, you gotta do it every single night, not just when you feel like it.'

"Both of those guys have the potential to be great. I love them. But sometimes I'm not sure they realize what it takes.

"That was (Rajon) Rondo's problem, too. Some days he did, some days he didn't. I think it's more this generation. A lot of these players have been catered to since the sixth grade. The NBA is changing so much. It's not like when I came up, with that old-school mentality that practice really mattered. You've got these 24, 25 year old guys who sit out of practice now to rest. It's hard for me to understand, but I'm trying.'' [...]

Pierce still engages in group texts with former Celtics teammates (and coach) Doc Rivers, Garnett, Kendrick Perkins and Big Baby Davis, but hasn't talked to Ray Allen since he bolted from Boston to Miami in the summer of 2012.

Though much has been made of it, Pierce said, people don't understand he wasn't all that close to Allen to begin with.

"It was a weird relationship,'' Pierce conceded. "We were all good friends on the court, but Ray always did his own thing. That's just the way Ray was. Even when we were playing together, we'd be having a team dinner and Ray wouldn't show up. We'd go to his charity events but Ray wouldn't show up to somebody else's.

"I called him on it. I said, 'Man, Ray, we support all your stuff but when we ask you, you don't come to ours.' I remember when Rondo re-signed with Boston, we had a little dinner at a restaurant and Ray didn't show up.

"I know Ray probably didn't like Rondo that much, but it wasn't a fact of not liking somebody. You don't have to like everybody you play with -- it's a matter of showing support.

"Rondo probably didn't like Ray either, but he came to Ray's functions to show, 'Hey, we're together in this.'

When a sport awards massive contracts to teenage players who've never accomplished anything at the professional level then is the point of the game the money or playing well?

Posted by at April 18, 2015 6:31 AM

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