“I’m Traumatized… Paranoid”: Surviving 11 Stabs, Paul Pierce Opens Up on Dark Nights After Flashy Celtics Days

Twenty-four years ago, one-time NBA champion Paul Pierce was stabbed eleven times in Boston’s “Bazz Club.” Battling depression, he not only tackled the trauma, but also had an outstanding year for the Celtics, scoring an average of 25.3 points per game.

Pierce wasn’t nervous when he wasn’t on the court, he looked like his normal self. But as months went by, his worry and fear got worse. While Pierce was out to dinner one night, the wait staff told him that he had a phone call from a friend who wanted to talk to him. When Pierce picked up the phone, a scary voice said, “I’m going to kill you.” That made him even more stressed.

In a recent podcast of The Draymond Green Show, Pierce opened up his flashback of the incident. He said, “You know what I’m saying, because I’m traumatized, I’m in my house, I’m scared, but at the same time, I’m paranoid. I’m like, I’m okase sleep, like I have to wear like a vest that this is people don’t know.”

Pierce continued and said it was very terrible to him. 

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What was that stabbing story? 

Pierce was in Boston at the Bazz Club with some friends, one of whom was his partner Tony Battie. The ten-time NBA All-Star said that things went wrong when he began to speak to some women.  Pierce was stabbed eleven times, which required surgery right away on his lungs. He said that two different knives hit him five times in the back and three times in the stomach.

Furthermore, the 23-year-old was hit in the head by a bottle, leaving a scar on his right eye that had to be fixed by surgery because it had been all “scraped out.” Pierce later saw that he had been bleeding and wounded; blood was running down his face. Following when he was no longer in danger, Pierce said that he might not have lived if the knife had gone in an inch to the left or right. 

The person who stabbed Pierce was identified as William Ragland, according to reports. The judge found Ragland guilty of the attack and gave him a 10-year prison term. An additional person, Trevor Watson, got a year in prison for hitting Pierce during the fight. 

Pierce got over both mental and physical pain, and his game got better, which took away any fears that his treatments might have caused. 

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