I am surprised by Tatum averaging more assists than Pierce. From what I remember, late in his career one of the greatest things about PP was his ability to bring the ball down the court and play like a point guard.
He only really developed his passing ability around 2003 - and his three point shooting tanked for around two years before rising back up in the mid-2000s.
Anyways I think young Pierce was probably the better offensive player. Putting his 2003 and 2004 campaigns aside (his efficiency was tanked by uncharacteristically bad three point shooting), his 2001 and 2002 campaigns look quite good compared to Tatum's 2021 season:
Pierce 2001 & 2002: 25.7 points per 75, 16.3% assist rate, 11.9% turnover rate, +4.8% rTS
Tatum 2021: 26.6 points per 75, 19.8% assist rate, 10.3% turnover rate, -0.2% rTS (not counting the game tonight)
Pierce obviously had less gaudy assist numbers, but I think some of it is about the era he played in: teams simply didn't run as much actions where the star can easily collapse defences and make simple reads to rack up assists. To me the numbers show that Tatum is a 'better' volume playmaker, but Pierce makes better reads and creates higher quality looks for his teammates (even a young Pierce who wasn't at the peak of his passing powers didn't have the tunnel vision that Tatum exhibits at times) to cut into that playmaking gap. As for scoring, I think it's pretty obvious that Pierce's ability to get to the free throw line made him an efficient volume scorer for his era while Tatum's reliance on converting difficult shots caps his efficiency at around league average.
Tatum definitely has a sizable advantage on defence though, so I don't think there's much separating the two overall.
