Paul Pierce
Paul Pierce is one of the top five players in the history of the Boston Celtics franchise. He is the 2008 NBA Finals MVP, a ten-time NBA All-Star, a four-time All-NBA selection, a 2002 Most Improved Player Award winner, and a 2021 Hall of Fame inductee. He is the Celtics’ all-time leader in games played (1,102), three-pointers made (1,823), and free throws made (6,918), and he is second on the franchise’s all-time scoring list behind only John Havlicek. Shaquille O’Neal, after Pierce’s 42-point performance against the Lakers in November 2001, called him “the motherfucking truth” in a postgame interview. The nickname stuck. He is also, in the autobiographical category that almost no other Hall of Famer shares, a stabbing survivor. On September 25, 2000, at a Boston nightclub called The Buzz, Pierce was stabbed 11 times (including in the neck and face) in what Boston prosecutors later determined to be an unprovoked altercation. He had lung surgery the next morning. He played all 82 games of the 2000-01 season that began five weeks later.
Oakland and Inglewood (1977–1995)
He was born October 13, 1977 in Oakland, California. His mother Lorraine Hosey moved the family to Inglewood, California when he was five. He grew up in a single-parent household with two older brothers. He attended Inglewood High School. He was cut from the varsity basketball team as a freshman; Inglewood’s program was a powerhouse at the time, producing multiple future college and NBA players, and the coaching staff felt Pierce was not physically ready. He made varsity as a sophomore. By his senior year he was averaging 24.0 points and was the Los Angeles City Section Player of the Year.
Kansas (1995–1998)
He committed to Kansas over UCLA and UNLV. He played three seasons for head coach Roy Williams. He was a consensus first-team All-American as a junior. Kansas reached the NCAA Tournament Elite Eight in 1996 and the Sweet 16 in 1997. He declared for the 1998 NBA Draft after his junior year.
The 1998 draft slide
The 1998 NBA Draft is remembered, among other things, for the Paul Pierce draft-night fall. Most pre-draft boards had Pierce going between the third and eighth pick. Instead, nine teams selected other players ahead of him. Michael Olowokandi went first to the Clippers. Mike Bibby went second to Vancouver. Raef LaFrentz went third to Denver. Antawn Jamison went fourth to Toronto (and was immediately traded to Golden State for Vince Carter; see our Vince Carter biography). Carter went fifth to Golden State (and was immediately traded to Toronto). Robert Traylor went sixth to Dallas (and was immediately traded to Milwaukee for Dirk Nowitzki; see our Dirk Nowitzki biography). Jason Williams went seventh to Sacramento. Larry Hughes went eighth to Philadelphia. Dirk Nowitzki went ninth to Milwaukee. Pierce went tenth to Boston. He was, by most subsequent retrospective rankings, the third-best player in the 1998 draft class behind Nowitzki and Carter.
The 2000 stabbing
On September 25, 2000, at approximately 12:30 a.m., Pierce was at The Buzz, a nightclub in Boston. The incident details, documented in a 2010 Boston Globe oral history by Jackie MacMullan, are that Pierce was involved in a verbal altercation with three men at the bar. The three attacked him with knives and a bottle. He was stabbed 11 times, including in the back, chest, and face. The deepest wound was to his neck, where a blade came within approximately three millimeters of a major artery. He was taken to Beth Israel Hospital and underwent emergency lung surgery. Celtics teammate Antoine Walker was at the club with Pierce and drove him to the hospital.
Pierce played the entire 2000-01 season, starting all 82 games. He averaged 25.3 points. He was named to his first All-Star team. Three of the assailants were later convicted; one, Tony Hurston, received a seven-year sentence. Pierce has said in multiple interviews since that the stabbing is the single event that most shaped his approach to every subsequent on-court moment. He donated $2.5 million to Beth Israel Hospital in 2008.
The pre-championship Celtics years (1998–2007)
He made All-NBA Third Team selections in 2002, 2003, and 2008. He led the Celtics to the Eastern Conference Finals in 2002 (losing to the New Jersey Nets in six). Otherwise, the pre-Garnett-and-Allen Celtics teams made the playoffs four times in Pierce’s first nine seasons without advancing past the first round on four occasions. By the summer of 2007, trade rumors had followed him for two years.
On June 28, 2007, Boston acquired Ray Allen from Seattle. On July 31, 2007, they acquired Kevin Garnett from Minnesota. Pierce, Allen, and Garnett became the most publicly assembled Big Three of the decade.
The 2008 NBA Championship
The 2007-08 Celtics went 66-16. Pierce averaged 19.6 points and was the third option offensively, which was, by his own account and Danny Ainge’s, a role adjustment that took much of the first half of the season to settle. In the 2008 Finals against the Kobe Bryant Lakers, Pierce averaged 21.8 points, 6.3 rebounds, and 6.3 assists. In Game 1 at TD Banknorth Garden on June 5, 2008, he was carted off the floor with what appeared to be a serious right-knee injury, then returned 90 seconds later and scored 15 points in the third and fourth quarters. The wheelchair sequence is one of the most-replayed Finals images of the decade. The Celtics won the series 4-2. Pierce won the Finals MVP with 9 of 11 first-place votes, ahead of Kevin Garnett.
The 2008 Finals MVP vote is the one discussed on our Every NBA Finals MVP page as the most-reconsidered award of the 2000s decade. The Athletic’s 2018 retrospective, conducted among 35 basketball writers, had Garnett winning the revote 49% to Pierce’s 27% to Ray Allen’s 17%. The original 2008 vote, taken in the minutes after Game 6, is the one that stuck.
The late Celtics years (2008–2013) and the Brooklyn trade
The 2008-09 through 2011-12 Celtics made four consecutive second-round or deeper playoff runs. They reached the 2010 Finals (losing to the Lakers in seven). They reached the 2012 Eastern Conference Finals (losing to the LeBron James Miami Heat in seven).
On June 28, 2013, the Boston Celtics traded Pierce and Kevin Garnett to the Brooklyn Nets in a seven-player deal that also returned three unprotected first-round picks (in 2014, 2016, and 2018) to Boston. The picks became Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, and Collin Sexton. It was, and remains, the single most-lopsided trade in Boston Celtics franchise history.
Brooklyn, Washington, the Clippers, and retirement (2013–2017)
He played one season in Brooklyn alongside Garnett. He signed with the Washington Wizards in July 2014 as a free agent and hit a series-winning buzzer-beater against Toronto in the 2015 first round (his most-cited late-career individual moment). He signed with the Los Angeles Clippers in 2015 and played two seasons before retiring on June 13, 2017 at age 39. His Celtics #34 was retired on February 11, 2018.
Hall of Fame and post-career
He was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame on September 11, 2021 alongside Chris Bosh and Chris Webber. His presenter was Kevin Garnett.
His post-playing work as an ESPN NBA analyst ended on April 19, 2021 after an Instagram Live session appeared to show Pierce in the presence of strippers. ESPN terminated his contract the next day. Pierce subsequently worked at Showtime Basketball and, from 2024, at Fox Sports 1. The termination and the aftermath have been covered in multiple long-form pieces; Pierce has said publicly he considers the firing disproportionate.
Legacy
The basketball résumé places him between 30th and 40th on most modern all-time rankings. The Athletic’s 2022 NBA 75 ranking placed him at 32nd, which is in line with his closest career-peer Kevin Garnett (14th; Garnett’s regular-season MVP and longer playoff run give him a substantially higher placement). Pierce’s career scoring total of 26,397 points is the 26th-highest in league history.
The two career moments that most basketball fans will specifically remember, beyond the 2008 championship and the 2008 Finals MVP, are: the 46-point Game 3 performance against the Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2008 Eastern Conference Semifinals (where Pierce outscored LeBron James directly, 46-45) and the 2015 Washington buzzer-beater. Both are on the 20-moment career-highlight reel that the Celtics produced for the 2018 jersey retirement.
Gear
Shop official Paul Pierce jerseys and fan gear on Fanatics, or browse The Book of Basketball.
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Sources
Basketball-Reference is the primary career statistical source. The Inglewood High School and Kansas recruitment chapter is from Chris Ballard’s June 2008 Sports Illustrated feature. The September 2000 stabbing oral history is from Jackie MacMullan’s September 2010 Boston Globe piece, cross-referenced against Massachusetts Suffolk County court records. The 2008 Finals MVP and the subsequent 2018 retrospective vote are from The Athletic’s June 2018 feature by Tim Cato. The 2013 Brooklyn trade details (including the three-pick return that became Marcus Smart, Jaylen Brown, and Collin Sexton) are from Brian Windhorst’s ESPN reporting. The April 2021 ESPN termination is from Front Office Sports’s same-day coverage.
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