Winderman: Paul Pierce’s tired anti-Heat act reached needed expiration date | Commentary
From the demise of the Boston Celtics’ Big Three to the Miami Heat’s emergence of their own Big Three to Ray Allen’s defection from New England to South Florida, Paul Pierce never could let it go.
During his tenure as an ESPN analyst, and even before, barbs were directed south seemingly at every turn. Some in good nature, some not, many uninformed. So moving past the circumstances of his dismissal from the network this past week, figure on few tears being shed at 601 Biscayne or from those who previously had called AmericanAirlines Arena home.
For example:
— Amid last season’s pandemic shutdown, Heat President Pat Riley dared take optimistic stock of his team, when he said in pre-taped, semi-promotional comments, “I want to build a championship team. I don’t have much patience. We’re close. Maybe we need another player. Maybe we need less. I don’t know. But we’re right there. We are a contender.”
Enter Pierce, in his analyst role on ESPN’s The Jump.
“I mean, if the Miami Heat are close, that means that every team in the NBA is close,” he said. “Let me tell you when you’re close, you’re close when you have a top-five player on your team. . . . No disrespect to Jimmy Butler. He’s good. But he’s not on these other guys’ level.”
Six months later, the Heat, led by Butler, closed within two victories of an NBA title.
— Then fast forward to two months ago, and there again was Pierce, back on that same ESPN set.
“As great as the Miami Heat were in the playoffs last year, they will not make the playoffs this year,” Pierce forecast.
Seemingly having come around at that point to what the Heat accomplished last season, he said of the Heat’s uneven play this season, “That’s not the Miami Heat team we saw last year, full of grit, full of grind, like the Memphis Grizzlies. That team was built on hard work and toughness and I have not seen that this year. And that’s why I don’t think they’ll make the playoffs.”
— But with Pierce, it wasn’t solely about this Heat team or these Heat moments.
Last May, when there was little to dissect about the Heat, Pierce, even with the Lakers on the way to the 2020 title, insisted LeBron James was not an all-time top-five NBA player.
“What has LeBron done to build up any organization from the ground?” he offered. “I’m talking about these players, Top 5 players: Bill Russell built the organization of Boston, Kareem, Magic, Jordan, Tim Duncan, Kobe, Bird. These guys are all-time top 10 players who helped build their organization or continued the tradition.”
— Later that same week, when there was little reason to reflect on the Heat’s run of two championships over James’ four-season run with the Heat, Pierce was back at it, accepting the Heat won the pair of titles with James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, but noting that it took Allen’s miraculous shot in the 2013 NBA Finals to add that second title to the Heat’s 2012 championship.
“Let’s be honest,” Pierce said on ESPN’s NBA Countdown, “when we saw that LeBron was going to Miami with D-Wade and Chris Bosh, did you not think they would run the table? It was like, that team, nobody can beat them. They should’ve been one of four, they skated with two of four, but they probably should’ve won three out of four.”
The Celtics’ Big Three run, of course, netted only a single title, in 2008. But, hey, who’s counting (except for Paul Pierce)?
— And a year before all of that, there was Pierce, again on the set of NBA Countdown, declaring the Celtics’ Big Three better than the Heat’s Big Three.
“It’s easy,” Pierce said. “If we were all in our prime versus them in their prime, they would sit on no championships right now. If we were in our prime . . . if we were all the same age, that [Heat] team wouldn’t have had a chance. We got injured after the first year.”
— During that same segment, ESPN Pierce was asked, between himself and Wade, “Who was the better NBA player?”
“That’s easy,” Pierce said. “I could say that off the bat. That’s me. If you give me Shaq, if you give me LeBron, if you give me these guys early in my career . . . I’d be sitting on five or six championships, easy. I played 10 years with who, with who?”
The irony is that before Pierce emerged as an analyst, when he solely stood as on-court antagonist, Heat captain Udonis Haslem in 2010 tagged Pierce a “studio gangster.”
It would have been easy to say that by the end of his ESPN tenure, Pierce had been reduced to a one-trick pony. Of course, his Instagram Live video said otherwise.
Then again, the final say on the matter of all things Heat/Pierce might have come during Wade’s final career appearance at AmericanAirlines Arena on April 9, 2019, when the crowd erupted into a chant, while the Heat were playing the Philadelphia 76ers, of, “Paul Pierce Sucks!”
Of that, Pierce said the following night on ESPN, “This is ridiculous.”
Yes, all of the Paul Pierce v. Miami Heat experience.
IN THE LANE
POSITIVE OUTLOOK: Having gone from 2020 NBA champion (Lakers) to 2021 contender (Heat) to the bottom of the standings with his trade-deadline move to the Houston Rockets, Avery Bradley has welcomed the mere opportunity to play. Limited to 10 appearances with the Heat due to COVID and a calf strain, the minutes have been there since his arrival in Houston. “A lot of people would think this is a tough situation, seeing I came from the Lakers and then Miami,” Bradley said. “But I look at it as a positive. I’m hoping I can stay here for the long term and hopefully finish my career here. I love being back in the state of Texas, and I love the organization so far.” Bradley played collegiately at Texas. “I feel like it’s my job to help [Kevin Porter Jr.3/8 improve every single day on the court and off the court. That’s my main role: bringing that leadership.”
WAY IT IS: One of the more amusing elements of pregame interviews with coaches this season is gauging the element of empathy for a shorthanded opponent. The response typically has been along the lines of welcome to the club. So no LeBron James, no Anthony Davis, no Kyle Kuzma, no Talen Horton-Tucker for the Lakers against his team on Thursday night? “That’s the Association,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said of facing a starkly different Lakers team from when the teams met in last season’s NBA Finals. “That’s what you deal with a lot, particularly this year. A lot of teams have been different from one game to another. And I’m sure people have felt that way about us.”
YOUNG GUNS: With the Lakers attempting to work in young players to their mix with James and Davis, Spoelstra was asked about similar efforts during his time with the Heat’s Big Three of James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, when he had to work in young players such as Mario Chalmers and Norris Cole into critical roles. “It was a really fun group,” Spoelstra said of the Heat at the start of last decade. “I just think, in general, LeBron always brings a great enthusiasm and life to a locker room. But then when you have young, ambitious, confident young players that also bring an energy, I think it just magnifies all of that. And you have to be the right kind of young players, with a work ethic and ability to also have a humility with veteran players, but not to be timid. Otherwise you’ll just get eaten up in a locker room like that. I think our young guys on those teams had those kind of qualities.”
GOLD STANDARD: Dillon Brooks certainly made the most of the Memphis Grizzlies’ lone trip of the season to Miami. The night before loading up with 28 points in Tuesday’s victory over the Heat at AmericanAirlines Arena, Brooks dined on the “Golden Tomahawk” steak from Nusr-Et Steakhouse, as in the $1,000 bone-in wagyu ribeye encrusted in 24-karat gold leaf. His review? “It tastes the same but it just cost me a little more,” he said.
NUMBER
4. Times the Heat have swept the regular-season series from a defending NBA champion, including 2-0 this season against the Lakers, with Thursday’s 110-104 victory. The Heat also did it in 2011-12 against the Dallas Mavericks, 2010-11 against the Lakers and 1995-96 against the Houston Rockets.
