Chris Bosh tells Paul Pierce that Boston is ‘the toughest place I’ve had to play’
Paul Pierce and Chris Bosh both know their way around a Big Three.
Pierce’s Celtics started the movement towards star-powered trios in 2007 before Bosh combined with LeBron James and Dwayne Wade to match them in Miami three years later. Pierce and Bosh joined another Big Three over All Star weekend, sitting down with Brian Scalabrine to discuss the Celtics-Heat rivalry and the evolution of the NBA.
On the Yahoo Sports NBA podcast with Chris Mannix, Pierce said that the era of trio-led teams may soon end as the top teams add a fourth star to the equation.
“I like Big Threes,” Pierce said. “Now it’s like we’re headed towards the era of Big Fours. I thought three was great, but you look at Golden State with four All-Stars. Now you have to have four All-Stars to consistently win.”
The former Celtics forward, who’s jersey was recently raised to the Boston Garden rafters, said that the Celtics’ Big Three happened organically. He said he didn’t make any phone calls to Kevin Garnett or Ray Allen asking them to join him in Boston. Instead, Danny Ainge was able to bring them together by swapping seven players, three draft picks, and cash for Garnett, Allen, and Banner 17. Pierce believes the Celtics’ success had a ripple effect across the league.
“I think we have some responsibility for that. If there wasn’t Boston’s three, there wouldn’t have been Miami and then there wouldn’t be Golden State,” Pierce said.
The animosity between Pierce’s Celtics and Bosh’s Heat peaked in the 2013 Eastern Conference Finals, which Miami came back to win in seven games, then flamed again when Allen left to sign with the Heat. Bosh said that at the height of the rivalry, it got to the point where he couldn’t sleep the night before facing Kevin Garnett and the Celtics.
“People don’t know that about Boston, man, it’s the toughest place I’ve had to play,” Bosh said.
Bosh talked about the challenge of facing someone as competitive as Garnett, describing every matchup against him as a wrestling match. He wasn’t the only one on the receiving end of KG’s loving embrace. Pierce told the story of the first time Joakim Noah came up against Garnett.
As Pierce tells it, Noah told Garnett that he had looked up to him growing up and even had Garnett’s poster on his wall. His idol responded by dropping an f-bomb on the youngster.
Pierce believes that competitive spirit is somewhat lacking in today’s NBA as public relations becomes more important and players make friendships through AAU.
“There’s so much money in this game,” Pierce said. “Billions of dollars at stake, reputations, images, branding—it’s a whole other landscape. You look at an NBA player who has eight, nine million followers on Instagram or Twitter. That’s an image thing. That creates dollars off the court for the player so players don’t want to do anything to damage that.”
The retired Celtics legend has no burning desire to get back on the court. He said he’s enjoying spending time with his family and hasn’t picked up a basketball in months.
“I wake up, look at the alarm clock, turn it off and lay back down,” he said.
