Here on Brooklyn Balling, I’ll try to recap the chaos that was the 2013-14 Nets season with a series of “Season Review” posts on the players, trades, and even coach that shaped how this year turned out. Shaun Livingston was last, and Paul Pierce is up next.
Prior to this season, Paul Pierce had spent his entire NBA career with the Boston Celtics as he was drafted by the team and had been with it–through good times and bad–for 15 seasons until he was surprisingly traded, along with Kevin Garnett and Jason Terry, to the Nets on draft night (June 28th, 2013) for a mish mosh of veterans, young players, and some draft picks.
The move was almost out of the blue, as no one really considered Brooklyn–with its already-exorbitant salary commitments–a viable landing spot for the three veterans that the Celtics were looking to unload. The Nets mortgaged their future in that deal, choosing to give up years of draft picks for one or two years of an aging, yet still talented, squad.
Obviously, that plan didn’t work out so well this season, as the Nets won just their opening round playoff series against the Raptors before falling to the Heat. However, they played pretty well for a team with a best player (Brook Lopez) injured for most of the season that began the year as badly as it possibly could.
In 75 games this year, in a career-low 28 minutes per game, Pierce saw his lowest scoring numbers of his NBA tenure as he scored a mere 13.5 points per contest, 5.1 points below his mark in the 2012-13 campaign. His shooting numbers basically across the board–outside of a small decrease in three-point percentage–improved, though, as his efficiency increased with his decrease in playing time and shots attempted.
His year-to-year transition, statistically, in the regular season mirrored that of his in the playoffs, as his field goal percentage improved (10 percentage points) but scoring went down (5.5 points).
Pierce’s best scoring output of the postseason came in Brooklyn’s Game 4 loss to the Raptors (22 points on 14 shots) but maybe his most defining Nets playoff moment came in Game 1, when his turnaround jumper over Patrick Patterson sealed the win. After that shot, Paul said his now famous “That’s why I’m here. That’s why they brought me here” line while walking to the other end of the court.
The former Celtic great and no-doubt future Hall-of-Famer really shined in the fourth quarter of that game, and certainly had other big scoring games in the Raptors series, but he never had the type of performance to lead Brooklyn to a win in the series against the Heat. Granted, after a down, eight-point Game 1, Pierce did put up 13, 14, 16, and 19 in Games 2-5 but wasn’t able to do much late in games during Brooklyn’s much-maligned fourth-quarter scoring droughts.
Even at the ripe old age of 36, Paul Pierce, this season in Brooklyn, showed why he’s still in this league and why every other team respects what he can do on the offensive end of the floor. But his contract is up this summer, and there’s no telling if he’s going to want to return to a Brooklyn team he really has no allegiance too. He could easily head back to his hometown of Los Angeles and play for his old coach, Doc Rivers, on the Clippers or even go back to Boston, where he established himself as a player.
Surely, the Nets would want Pierce back on a reasonable deal, but would he sign a team-friendly contract to stay a Net? Probably not. At his age and point in his career, Pierce needs to do what’s best for himself, and maybe that involves not returning to Brooklyn, even though with the Nets’ current roster uncertainty, they–and Nets fans–hope he chooses differently.
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