Paul Pierce on today's NBA: 'I probably wouldn't have got drafted'
Paul Pierce is now 37 years old, but he's always had a bit of an old-man game.
It would be unfair to say Pierce was never a terrific athlete, but he plays a ground-based game. He's utilized savvy, strength and smarts more than vertical leap or length. And, particularly as he's aged, he's relied less and less on natural athleticism to succeed.
Because that's been the book on Pierce, and perhaps because he's one of the game's elder statesmen, he takes issue with the league's drooling over athletes with upside instead of established basketball players. He even wonders if there would be a place for him as a prospect these days, were he to be transplanted from the 1997 Kansas Jayhawks to a more recent incarnation.
As Pierce told the Dan Patrick Show on Tuesday:
I think a lot of these young, talented kids are just rated on their pure, like, length and athleticism. But really no basketball IQ, no footwork, really can't shoot the ball.
...
I probably wouldn't have got drafted. A lot of stuff is based on potential, so I probably would have gone later in the first round or something. This draft class was definitely supposed to be one of the great draft classes of this era and as you see, I really don't see nobody in this class really standing out so far, even though it's only been 10 games.
According to newspaper information from 1998 curated by DraftExpress, Pierce entered the league measuring 6-foot-6 without shoes and 229 pounds, but did not have the standard athletic measurements tested, like wingspan, standing reach or vertical jump.
Weighing 229 pounds would certainly put him on the heavier side for a small forward, and the only players particularly close to his measurements from this past draft were P.J. Hairston and Kyle Anderson, who are a bit shorter and taller, respectively. Solomon Hill, the No. 23 pick in 2013, is the best recent comparison based on size, but there's really nobody shaped like Pierce who scored as prolifically as he did as a college junior.
It's an interesting thought experiment, anyway. Pierce was taken 10th overall and now ranks as one of the 50 greatest players of all time. Maybe there's another non-prototypical college scorer lurking as an underrated draft asset, capable of filling up the stat sheet for the next two decades.