Paul Pierce thinks he would have gone undrafted in this era of NBA basketball.
Paul Pierce appeared on the Dan Patrick Show on Tuesday, and he was asked what the most overrated quality in the NBA today. Pierce thinks everyone is putting too much emphasis on length and athleticism and not enough emphasis on basketball IQ. He went on to say that “I probably wouldn’t have got drafted” in today’s NBA due to that over emphasis.
Pierce was then asked to elaborate on his answer and he said this according to James Herbert of CBS Sports:
“I don’t know,” Pierce said. “A lot of stuff is based on potential. Or I probably would’ve went later in the first round or something. It’s amazing how many — this draft class was supposed to be one of the great draft classes of this era, and as you see, I really don’t see nobody in this class really standing out so far. Even though it’s only been 10 games. But unlike the LeBron class when you had a number of franchise guys, you just kind of knew that class was going to be great, this class has been dubbed the same thing based on potential. And we haven’t really seen much of it yet.”
A lot of what Pierce said was true. When you look at Twitter and different sports media outlets, a lot of the videos of up-and-coming players depict their athletic abilities and not their on-court IQ. This rookie class has been dubbed as one of the best and most of the players in the class are all athletic beasts. Paul Pierce came into the NBA with an old man type of game and he had excellent footwork. These days, the prototypical wing player is nothing like Paul Pierce even though Pierce still had a great deal of athleticism when he came into the league. This emphasis on athleticism could lead to over-hyping undeserving players, but that won’t be evident until the new generation of players get a few years under their belts.
