Written by Matt Moore at CBSSports.com
Listen, if we’re going to keep the truth about Paul Pierce alive, we’re going to have to fight for it.
I’m for advanced metrics as much as anyone; I want as much information about the game as we can muster. I’m for film breakdowns and plus-minus and on-off and PER and everything else. I want to know everything before making a decision on how to evaluate a player in the short, long or historical term. But the numbers are never going to do Paul Pierce justice. His game wasn’t maximized for efficiency, wasn’t built to translate his gifts into how they would be received by formulas today.
This is similar to the fact that Larry Bird’s 3-point numbers don’t reflect what kind of shooter he was. The 3-point shot just wasn’t used when Bird played. It was a fringe element, a novelty of sorts. And when Pierce played, it was the grandest era of hero ball. Low motion, low ball movement basketball reigned, and that drags down efficiency.
And still, if we remember Pierce for one thing, it should be that he could take the game over as few in its history could.
Everyone who watched Pierce has their time that belongs to them. For some it’s the 2008 run with Boston. For some, it’s even those later years with Washington. But for many, it’s this earlier era, when Pierce dragged a flawed and suspect 2002-03 Celtics team so far as to make you think they were a legit threat. Tony Delk was the third-highest scorer on that team. J.R. Bremer was fifth. Boston was 24th in offensive rating, only eighth in defense, and pushed Indiana to six games in the second round, almost entirely because of Pierce.
This was kind of the story of Pierce’s career, and it carried through all the way to his days in Brooklyn. Pierce’s teams would look sluggish, ugly and inefficient, you would bury them and forget about them. Then spring would come, and in the playoff environment, it would become possession basketball.
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