Paul Pierce thought he would feel better after a few weeks passed. He thought the emotions of being traded away from his beloved Boston Celtics two summers ago eventually would dissipate.

They didn’t.

Pierce missed Boston and felt regrets about leaving the Celtics franchise throughout his lone season with the Brooklyn Nets, he said in a brief but revealing interview with Sports Illustrated. It turns out leaving the place he called home for the first 15 years of his NBA career was even more difficult than Pierce anticipated.

“It was a roller coaster, definitely,” Pierce, now with the Washington Wizards, told SI. “Going through what we went through last year, I had thoughts like, ‘Shoot, I could have just stayed in Boston.’ (The Celtics) were going through some of the same things we were going through in Brooklyn. The key was to stay positive. Times change, you have to move on, and that is what I eventually did.”

Pierce has never made a secret of his affection for Boston, but this is still a doozy of an admission. We already knew he was deeply affected by the gut-wrenching trade that sent Kevin Garnett and himself to the Nets in 2013, but for Pierce to have felt pangs of regret throughout last season — even saying the Nets, who made it to the second round of the Eastern Conference playoffs, went through “some of the same things” as the 25-57 Celtics — shows just how deeply it hurt Pierce to not be able to finish his career in Boston.

Still, Pierce left open the possibility that he could return to the Celtics at some point, as he has multiple times previously. He even told SI he worked out twice at the Celtics’ practice facility this summer.

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