It’s been a rough time to be Paul Pierce as of late. Since boldly proclaiming that he was better than Dwyane Wade, he’s been the constant ridicule of seemingly anyone who could come up with a joke to make at his expense. Things started just moments after his claim when Jalen Rose read off a list of all the great things Wade had achieved that Pierce didn’t. Then the Miami faithful started a “Paul Pierce sucks!” chant at Wade’s last home game.




The jokes even kept coming today. During Yahoo’s NBA weekly show, a graphic went up to remind the viewers of how many points a group of four former NBA superstars scored in their respective final game. The use of “petty” in the tweet might be an understatement.


As if that wasn’t enough, the crowd at Barclays Center—a place Pierce played his home games during his one-season tenure with the Nets—also started a “Paul Pierce sucks” chant during Wade’s season finale on Wednesday night. (It might seem harsh to have former fans start that cheer, but if anyone were to know about Pierce’s playing abilities, it’d be people who watched him, right?)

Needless to say, Pierce has been in dire need of image rehabilitation. While he might not have current public opinion on his side, he does have the benefit of being an analyst on national television in an environment where none of the folks who have been clowning him for almost a week now could get to him. Pierce decided to use this position to his advantage on Wednesday night right before NBA Countdown cut away to Clippers-Jazz.

It started with Chauncey Billups bringing up the notable fact that this postseason will be the first one in a long time that does not feature the likes of LeBron James or Dwyane Wade. Before Billups could get to his third example, Pierce interrupted the list and included his name in there. Billups continued through the end of the interruption to add Carmelo Anthony and Dirk Nowitzki. The former Washington Wizard then followed Billups’s comment up by repeating what his fellow analyst just said, except with his own name firmly placed as third on the list.

Somehow, I see this ending with Pierce getting caught trying to break into the NBA’s headquarters in an attempt to destroy any evidence of his career after 2013.