Once a Celtics hater but drafted by the franchise itself, Paul Pierce’s NBA debut was a major flip of emotions. Boston Celtics drafted The Truth into the league back in 1998 and he played 15 seasons for the franchise. In fact, the only NBA championship Pierce ever won also came with the Celtics. Sharing such time with the team, it would be hard to believe that he never met one of the greatest players of the franchise — Larry Bird.

This is what Paul Pierce has claimed in his recent appearance on ‘Undisputed Live’. “I saw Larry once. He came to the garden when we played Indiana… When I was on Celtics, played Indiana… That’s the closest I seen him. He never came around Boston. I think he had a lot of issues with the former owners… he just never came really back to Boston,” Pierce said.

The 46-year-old further mentioned that these issues were probably the reason Larry took the job with the Pacers. Notably, the Pacers hired the 3x NBA champ as the head coach in 1997 and he won the Coach of the Year award in 1998. The 3x NBA champ coached the team for 3 seasons and had an impressive win percentage of 68.7. Though he won no NBA championship as a coach, Bird led the Pacers to playoffs for three consecutive seasons.

This would be a disappointing phase for Pierce, who in the Undisputed Live claimed that he would have loved picking Larry Bird’s brain had he got a chance. Despite not having met him, Pierce still holds a high regard for the 12x All Star. In fact, speaking on Bird and Luka Doncic’s comparison recently, he stated, “… he (Larry Bird) changed the game, he made us watch basketball”. However, this was not how The Truth always felt about The Hick from French Lick.

The time Pierce stated he hated Celtics and Larry Bird

As stated above, Pierce played 15 seasons for the Celtics, won a championship with the team and multiple other accolades with the franchise. But growing up, he was a fan of Magic Johnson’s Los Angeles Lakers who had a considerable hand in popularizing the sport. So it was natural for him to feel that popular rivalry of Bird and Johnson that shaped the NBA itself. Speaking to ESPN in 2019, he mentioned he was an avid basketball fan. And growing up in LA, Inglewood, he could not stand the Celtics.

“I hated the Celtics so much. You understand the rivalry. I hated Larry Bird, I hated everything about the Celtics… Growing up on the west coast, especially LA, you hate the Boston Celtics… You’re just you’re grandfathered into that,” he said in 2019.

But as the destiny would have it, Pierce was drafted into NBA by the same franchise in 1998 and came to be recognized by the team’s colors even though he hopped three other teams, including the Lakers. He is currently ranked second as the team’s lead scorer with 24,021, surpassing Larry Bird on third and interestingly, defeated the Lakers 4-2 for the Celtics’ first and his first and only championship in 2008.