Does This Look Like The Face Of A Top 50 Player Of All Time?
Just the other day I declared that if there was a basketball debate topic put out on the internet during this quarantine, it was my obligation to blog it. Well that brings us to this question that came across my timeline last night. Now if you've been following along with these types of blogs I've been doing you know that to form a conclusion I use nothing but reason and cold hard facts to form my opinion. Never has that been more challenging than with this topic, I can admit that. Seeing as how I would die for this man and my entire life have considered him my generation's Larry Bird, some might think this blog will be nothing but homerism and bias. That's why we're going to look at the actual production and rankings of where Pierce falls so help come to our conclusion.
Piece is a fascinating case because I feel like in 2020, a lot of people confuse the bullshit with what he says on television for what he was as a player. There is no defending some of the straight up idiotic things he says nowadays, but you can't let that impact how you evaluate what he did over his career. They are two very separate things. This is also an obvious player that the haters of the world like Lakers/Sixers/etc fans will vote "false" just because they hate the Celtics. That's fine, give me their tears.
Being Top 50 is fluid, it's going to change over time as the younger generation of players play longer and accumulate stats/achievements/whatever. But we're talking right this second in 2020, so let's have a look.
All Time Career Regular Season Rankings
19th in Minutes Played
30th in FGM
9th in 3PM
9th in FTM
18th in PTS
25th in Win Shares
22nd in STL
41st in DREB
All Time Career Playoff Rankings
22nd in Minutes Played
31st in FGM
12th in 3PM
16th in FTM
24th in STL
22nd in PTS
34th in Win shares
28th in DREB
Alright so in our first stage of evaluation you can see whether it was the regular season or the postseason, Pierce lives in the top 50 all time pretty much everywhere you look. There's no bias or homerism there, those are simply the facts. Now let's move to the accomplishments
10x All Star
4x All NBA
1x Finals MVP
Did you know there are only 41 players all time that have at least 10 All Star appearances? I didn't before I did the research for this blog but that's pretty interesting. Pierce is also one of 31 players all time to ever be awarded a Finals MVP. Again, no bias in sight, these are just the facts.
Then we move to where Pierce ranks all time in his position. Admittedly, this one criteria can be a little subjective. He's for sure a top 10 SF all time, and this is how I'd rank that 10
1. LeBron James
2. Larry Bird
3. John Havlicek
4. Kevin Durant
5. Elgin Baylor
6. Dr. J
7. Scottie Pippen
8. Paul Pierce
9. Dominique Wilkins
10. Adrian Dantley
Maybe your order is a little different, but the point is in order to be Top 50 all time in my opinion you need to be at least Top 10 at your position. Pierce qualifies there as well. Also, as additional evidence of my lack of bias and homerism in this blog, credit to me for being honest about the top of this list.
When you take a step back and look at everything we learned you see a player that finished his career in the top 50 in almost every category both in the regular season and the playoffs, you see someone who is in rare air in terms of All Star appearances and Finals MVP, and finally you have someone that ranks in the top 10 at his position.
So is Paul Pierce currently a Top 50 player all time? Objectively, the answer is yes. Anyone who votes no is simply not willing to accept the facts and is letting their own bias and agenda cloud their judgement.
Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.