Celtics’ legend Paul Pierce is headed into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame this weekend following his 19-year NBA career, 15 of them with Boston. With that comes a rehashing of the career that got him to this pinnacle of the sport.
But that career almost took a major turn in 2007 when Pierce tried to force his way to Dallas in a trade, something Chris Mannix wrote in a cover story for Sports Illustrated about Pierce going into the Hall.
Then Mark Cuban confirmed the story and said it was closer than anyone realized, but also said it was years later than when Pierce recalls.
It gets better. We had a deal done. We had a 3 way trade done. All teams agreed to their part of the deal. When we get on the trade call, the 3rd team killed the deal because they didnt know that a first was going to the Celtics. They chose not to do the deal at all.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 7, 2021
It was after 2008.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 7, 2021
In the summer of 2007, Danny Ainge engineered trades to bring Kevin Garnett from Minnesota and Ray Allen from Seattle to Boston. It’s unlikely that Pierce was trying to force is way out at that point. The rest is history: Pierce, KG, and Allen won a title for the Celtics in 2008, and now all three are in the Hall of Fame.
Ultimately, the Celtics traded Pierce to Brooklyn in 2013. Kidd was in Dallas through 2012. So, somewhere between 2008 and 2012 this all went down.
Kidd and Nowitzki went on to win a title in 2011 without Pierce. If the trade had gone through, Pierce would have added another major scoring threat and a shot creator, making the Mavericks a serious threat to win a title, even as their stars aged. Dallas would have been formidable.
Instead, add this trade to the massive pile of near-deals that would have reshaped the NBA had they come together.
