It’s been almost six years since Paul Pierce, Doc Rivers and the Boston Celtics brought a 17th championship to the storied franchise. But Pierce had to endure a longer period than that before reaching the pinnacle.
Drafted by the Celtics in 1998, Pierce went through nearly decade of ups and downs before winning his first ring. After reaching the Eastern Conference Finals in 2002, Boston suffered early exits in the next three postseasons. Things only got worse from there, as the team won 57 games combined from 2005 to 2007.
Yet everything changed in the 2007-08 season, of course, when Pierce teamed up with Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to go 66-16 under Rivers’ tutelage before eventually downing the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2008 NBA Finals.
Pierce and Rivers will return to TD Garden together for the first time since their Boston days Wednesday night as members of the Los Angeles Clippers. It should be quite the trip down memory lane both for player and coach, and at the Clippers’ shootaround Wednesday morning, Rivers started that trip by insisting Pierce’s loyalty to Boston cannot be overstated.
“He gets more credit than all of us — the coaches, Kevin and Ray,” Rivers said. “To me, it all starts with Paul. Without Paul, we would have never won it, obviously, because he had to allow everything that happened — he had to allow the losing for those couple years, even the years before me, and not get frustrated, and not bail, like a lot of people do.
“Paul never wanted to bail on the Celtics. He hung in there, we finally got it right for him and we won a title. But to me, Paul should get more credit than people know, because he could have asked for a trade, he could have done a lot of things, and he never, ever wanted to do that. So I think a lot of the credit should always go to Paul.”
That last bit might be a slight exaggeration, as Pierce himself admitted recently he came very close to leaving Boston in 2005 and wanted to play for the Dallas Mavericks. But after Celtics president of basketball operations Danny Ainge couldn’t work out a deal, Pierce kept his faith with Boston, and that faith soon was rewarded in the form of a long-awaited title.
Thumbnail photo via Kim Klement/USA TODAY Sports Images
