Paul Pierce was never cool, man — he was so much more

The speeches, the shout-outs, the memory recalls, the impassioned cheers from the crowd, and the tribute video, with all its nostalgic force, played in lockstep with the abiding theme of second screen experience: jeers, memes, jokes, all in service of the decimation of Paul Pierce. On one end, his jersey retirement ceremony, a homage to his greatness. On the other, Comedy Central’s Roast of Paul Pierce.

And I couldn’t help but wonder. I couldn’t help but try to remember. At one point or another, wasn’t Paul Pierce cool?

He went basket-for-basket against LeBron James in Game 7 of the 2008 Eastern Conference Semifinals, enroute to his lone championship victory. Celtics GM Danny Ainge, who delivered a speech during Sunday night’s tribute, following Cleveland’s evisceration of the Celtics, shared his favourite moment watching Pierce play came in that game. It wasn’t one of many clutch jumper, but of Pierce getting the inside track on a jump-ball that Zydrunas Ilgauskas directed towards LeBron, lunging through bodies in an imitation of a kicked-ball interception, and jumping on top of the ball before anybody thought to dive. The Celtics called timeout, up by three with a minute remaining. Pierce, splayed out on the floor, clenched the ball in his hand and screamed in unison with the Garden crowd. Weeks later, upright, with the Finals MVP trophy, he’d do the exact same thing. Pierce wore every moment on his chest.

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Sunday night’s blowout, featuring the new-look Cavaliers blasting the Celtics behind LeBron’s near-triple double, was an object lesson in life’s reversals. Even when LeBron banged knees with Baynes and came away limping, Twitter jumped on jokes — pretty funny ones, I might add — about bringing a wheelchair out for James as a nod to Pierce being wheeled off and returning in the same game. Celtics co-owner Wycliffe Grousbeck offered some historical context, saying “They got us today, but we got them back then,” but all the drubbing did was lend more schadenfreude to the current moment.

Pierce was already on his way to being a punchline, cited more often for tweeting a rocket emoji as a jpeg file than for his NBA career. Then, he voiced his displeasure about sharing his tribute day with Isaiah Thomas who, at the time, would have played his first game back at the TD Garden on Sunday. You spend fifteen years with a franchise. You want the day to yourself. That seems, if slightly petty, fair. But then he questioned the notion of whether Thomas deserved a tribute in the first place, since he didn’t lead Boston to a championship. The larger point about the oversaturation of tributes to returning players stands. But Thomas, who led the Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals playing through a hip injury and the tragic death of his sister, was not its appropriate vehicle. That was the Paul Pierce we saw during the game, stone-faced as Cleveland mauled the Celtics.

We were reminded during the ceremony, though, why Pierce’s career was worth memorializing. We were reminded, courtesy of Ainge, that Pierce took a paycut to set up the offseason that brought Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett in. It wasn’t brought up, but you couldn’t help but remember that Pierce got stabbed eleven times in the summer of 2000 and started every game that season. We were reminded of the patented step-back, the signature shot from the left corner of the free throw line — the jumper that allowed him to teeter on the edge of greatness, that left him within a crying call of inevitability. We remembered why The Truth is the best nickname in NBA history.

When the man himself took the mic, in a green-and-white plaid suit with navy blue pants, he spent the majority of his speech thanking his immediate family, his mother, his brothers, his coaches, and his teammates, the “so many people that are instrumental.” He had to remind himself to breathe. He started talking about his kids, and the tears finally began to escape. A few moments after relinquishing the mic, he asked to take it back because he forgot to thank someone important, Red Auerbach. We learned that Pierce had only one trainer in his nineteen year NBA career, his lifelong best friend.

Pierce looked, in that moment, like a simple man who accomplished a great deal — and sacrificed a great deal of money — for the Celtics. For that, he wanted his day. The fact that he had to fight for it sheds light on why he’ll never move with the easy grace of other retired legends. There is a biting honesty behind one of the most popular Paul Pierce jabs, courtesy of Draymond Green: “They don’t love you like Kobe.”

It’s true. Kobe never would have been in this position. Not because Kobe couldn’t be petty. Not even because nobody would dare honor somebody else on Kobe’s big night — although, I’m guessing they wouldn’t — but because Kobe could never fathom the idea of somebody else overshadowing him. That simply isn’t an insecurity that Kobe and his ilk have to operate with. The special irony, of course, was that Thomas got traded to the Lakers prior to the tribute. Even if Pierce didn’t ask for his own night, he would have got it anyways.

Pierce’s No. 34, etched into a poster with a slew of Celtics legends, was presented on the parquet floor as “Thank you, Paul Pierce” chants echoed throughout the TD Garden. Elevating it to its rightful place in the stands among seventeen championship banners, was Pierce, pulling down on the rope himself, lifting his own banner. With Pierce, it’s always taken a little more grift. He could never be cool. He could never afford to be graceful. Despite what Doc Rivers said on Sunday, it never actually looked easy.

As the festivities carried on, the thing I thought about most wasn’t his championship, his playoff performances, his ten All-Star appearances, the decade or so he spent as a key figure in the NBA. It was a moment, actually, that will be as lost to history as today’s slander. It was a razor’s edge short of cool, but it was the last time in his career that Paul Pierce was capable of doing the thing that made him Paul Pierce: driving fear into the fanbase of his opponents.

It was May 15, 2015. Paul Pierce was a member of the Washington Wizards, who were playing an elimination Game 6 against the Atlanta Hawks. The Wizards were down three points on the final possession of the game and John Wall, smothered by DeMarre Carroll and Kent Bazemore, kicked the ball to Pierce. Al Horford, of all people, closed out on him. Pierce dribbled toward to his left, losing Horford and side-stepping Kyle Korver. He planted his left foot into the ground, pulled up for a one-legged fadeaway from corner, and fell out of bounds. The ball, by some painstakingly cruel miracle, dropped into the net. It was incredible moment. But the buzzer sounded before he got it off. Pierce’s shot was waived off, and the Wizards were sent packing. Ambling into a makeable shot, he was just a second — a millisecond — too late.

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Paul Pierce, with his plodding, methodical process, his limping gait and swishing gut, belying the strength that never failed to allow him the space to get the shot off, always looked better as a snapshot.

Decades from now, his number will still hang from the rafters, the tribute video will still exist as long as YouTube does, and nobody will remember how the sausage was made. For a player as stubborn, as flawed, as debated, as undeniable, as absorbing as Paul Pierce, that’s a damn shame.