Paul Pierce went through a few brutal seasons in terms of winning and losing with the Boston Celtics before the arrivals of Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.
On Tuesday via SI.com, Pierce revealed at one point before the Big 3 was formed with the Celtics, he shutdown a potential trade to the Portland Trail Blazers and pushed for a trade to the Dallas Mavericks.
By the end of the 2006–07 season, Pierce had enough. His relationship with Rivers had improved. The Celtics had not. In ’05–06, Pierce averaged 26.8 points per game. Boston finished the season 33–49. The next year, they won just 24. Pierce wanted out. Boston shopped him to Portland. Pierce killed that. “Too dysfunctional,” says Pierce. In spring ’07, Pierce ran into Mavericks owner Mark Cuban in Las Vegas. Pierce told Cuban: I’m your missing piece. Pierce pushed Schwartz to attempt to engineer a trade to Dallas. “I’m in my prime, and I’m watching all these other guys in the playoffs,” says Pierce. “It was depressing. I thought I was out of there. I thought it was over.”
This of course never came to fruition as it was the summer of 2007 when Danny Ainge pieced together to separate deals to land Garnett and Allen.
Then Celtics forward Brian Scalabrine remembers how motivated Pierce was that summer after those moves.
“He was a monster that training camp,” says then Celtics forward Brian Scalabrine. “He leveled up five notches.”
Boston would of course go on to reach the mountain top with their Big 3 and the rest was history.
Follow Us
Subscribe