Pierce

[Kim Malo]

At 06:43 AM 3/12/2008, asterix ninetynine wrote:
>Nice to see Paul Pierce get the love from the Globe this year.  For 
>many years he had to bear the brunt of dissatisfied fans who 
>magnified every little mistake.  He never complained and never acted 
>like a primadonna.  He deserves respect and admiration.

Well he does, but let's not go overboard into revisionist history. 
It's worth noting that he'd already turned his attitude around last 
year, well before the changes occurred which gave him a real reason 
to be playing with the visible joy you see now, but that attitude 
needed adjustment.

He was about as unco-operative and frequently openly disrespectful 
towards his new coach as he could be when Doc first came here (and in 
fact IMO Doc deserves some credit for Pierce's attitudinal turnaround 
last year because he didn't hold a grudge and so helped created an 
atmosphere where that turnaround was possible - never could have 
happened with someone like Obie, even with Pierce willing), with 
behavior that you can call childish if you want to get into a 
semantics thing over whether it was actual prima donnaism. No, he 
never was a notorious jerk, because a) he's not a natural jerk and b) 
he didn't go out of his way to run to the press with his displeasure, 
but he wasn't a saint nor particularly admirable some of that time 
either. While although I don't pretend to Egg's inside sources, the 
word was that of complaints there were aplenty. Just not a lot of 
public ones, beyond the faces and other childish behavior on the 
bench and court around Doc and the occasional slip during an interview.

I'd rather praise him for the way he's wholeheartedly embraced the 
new changes to not just accept a bit less scoring, etc - i.e. the 
obvious adjustment - in return for winning, but to go a huge step 
beyond that into actively improving his own game to become a much 
better all around player. A lot of star players wouldn't think they 
should have to at this stage in their career. All while visibly 
throwing himself into it with that joy I cite above, which is 
infectious, rather than retaining the slightest sign of vestigial 
resentment over the ugly past few years. A lot of people and players 
wouldn't have been able to let go of that resentment and it's to his 
credit that he did, so let's not pretend it wasn't there..

Kim