As you can tell from my name, Pierce can do no wrong for me. He's been the lone constant in my time as a fan and I loathe thinking that his retirement is not too far away (relatively speaking). He is vastly underrated on the national stage and has deferred the attention to Garnett... Which get me to the player I am biased about.
KG really rubs me the wrong way. Not because he is a bad player, but because his reputation is way out of wack with the reality. When I think down the line, I will not be telling my kids, "man you should have seen that Garnett." What would i tell them? How he hit 18 jumpers all day long? Has a great mid range shot, but offensively, he isn't all that special. It frustrates the hell out of me that he doesn't take it to the post. For an all time player, he has very few moments that we will remember 20 years from now. I hate all the cussing and yelling when things are going great but no talking when things are going poorly. I want to see him get in Tim Duncan's grill, not zaza pachulia or jose calderon.
Furthermore, it bothers me how much credit he gets for the team's success and how little Paul gets. People say he brought a winning culture to the Celtics? How? The man never won a thing in his life, and before the trade he was just as successful as Paul Pierce. People like to say that he has made Paul Pierce a better player and a better defender, yet they stop short of giving pierce credit. Granted, maybe KG has motivated the guys on the defensive end, but pierce is still doing work. I don't see KG moving Pierce's body.
The quote that sticks with me is Bob Ryan in 2008 saying about KG, "we knew he was a great player, we knew he was an all time player, but we didn't know he was this good." (or something to that nature.) Really? What has KG done here that he didn't do as well in Minnesota? If anything KG's best years were already behind him when he came to Boston.
There are countless other examples that I could go on all day about, but this is good for now. But for all these reasons, I am extra hard on KG and keep wanting his reality to come into agreement with reputation. I guess the reasons I'm hard on him have more to do with other's perception of his game than anything he does himself (except for the talking and lack of inside play). So I do appreciate what he does.
Oh, and Rasheed wallace rubs me the wrong way when putting up all those threes
