Paul Pierce Providing Blueprint for Graceful NBA Aging
Forget the 10 All-Star nods, the 2007-08 NBA Finals MVP and the championship ring. What Paul Pierce is doing now may be his most remarkable achievement yet.
He's aging gracefully—completing the nearly impossible transition from superstar to sage with ease. He's leading the Washington Wizards to a level they couldn't possibly have reached without him.
Former coach and current ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy has offered up a truism borrowed from Bill Walsh dozens of times over the years. His steadfast belief in a nutshell: The hardest player to coach is the aging star in decline.
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Pride and stubbornness are valuable traits for athletes, and it sometimes seems the best ones have more of both. The greater the player, the harder it is to subjugate those qualities, and the reluctance to accept declining skill has made for more than a few uncomfortable final chapters.
Pierce has become the exception to the rule, managing his physical slippage smartly and leaning on the most valuable commodity in his arsenal: hard-earned experience. As a result, he's been a blessing, not a burden, to head coach Randy Wittman and the Wizards.
"His fit with this team has just been perfect,” Wittman said, per Jay King of MassLive.com. “The cohesiveness is always an important factor in my mind that you have to have to be a good team. It’s just not based solely on talent. And those are the things that Paul has brought here right from the start."
The Right History
As rare as Pierce's successful transition is, we probably should have seen it coming. His career has been marked by distinct phases that prepared Pierce to handle change better than most.
B/R's Michael Pina wrote shortly after Pierce signed with Washington, "Few players of his stature know more about sacrifice, and the level of individual statistical forfeiture necessary to create team success on a consistent basis. He’s made the playoffs 11 times, knows what it takes to get there and why more times than not things don’t go as planned."
From draft snub to low-percentage one-man show in his early days, Pierce morphed into a more efficient scorer and team leader. Then, he relinquished shots and control when the Boston Celtics brought on Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.
That evolution belied a willingness to put the team first, a necessary trait for graceful NBA aging. If ego or the desire to prove "I've still got it" trumps the team, you get the sadder stories: gunners playing the same game they always have with decreasing success. It's playing out this way for Kobe Bryant right now, but he's hardly the first.
Michael Jordan fizzled with the Wizards. Allen Iverson chucked to the end.
The other extreme for aging players is similarly dangerous. Some sit around and talk, serving as locker room influencers but doing precious little to back up their chatter on the court. You could argue the all-talk veteran is less harmful to a team than the defiant chucker, but it's difficult for even the wisest words to hit home if the young players listening know he can't get the job done anymore.
The Right Mix
Pierce is not a rocking-chair leader.
He doesn't sit teetering back and forth in the locker room spouting cliches about grit and the old days. He knows the key element to veteran leadership is showing (if only occasionally) that there's some skill left to support the sagacity.
His stats are stable, essentially identical to what they were last year on a per-minute basis. His player efficiency rating of 17.0, per Basketball-Reference.com, shows he's still an above-average contributor.
More importantly, Pierce has shown the ability to channel some of his past clutch glory—like he did on Dec. 8 in a double-overtime win against the Boston Celtics. In that game, Pierce ably defended Jeff Green, holding him to 1-of-6 shooting in the extra frames despite playing with five fouls. He also drilled a game-tying three with 38 seconds left in the first overtime and took a pivotal charge on Green in the second.
Aging the right way is tricky. It's not all about dispensing advice and setting an example. Sometimes, it's also about picking spots to send a message with actual play.
The Right Place
Speaking of picking spots, Pierce couldn't have chosen a better one than Washington.
He tried the all-vet thing in Brooklyn, and it didn't work. There, his value as an old head wasn't as great because old heads were all the Nets had. He needed an audience more receptive to what he had to offer.
Over the summer, Pierce found the right team—one with an upward trajectory, young talent and a leadership void. And it couldn't have worked out better.
The Wizards took to him immediately.
"That's what I think makes him great. He's a true warrior. He's a leader. I've been here for a week now, and I work with him every day. I play with him every day. It's ridiculous how people follow his lead," Marcin Gortat told CSN Washington's J. Michael just a week into training camp.
It's tempting to say Pierce could have had a similar impact on any young team. But that discounts the young Wizards' willingness to learn. Pierce and Washington were and are the perfect match.
Paying It Forward
The result of Pierce mastering the aging process is the best version of the Wizards we've seen in 40 years. They're a dozen games over .500 and right in the thick of the race for the Eastern Conference's top seed.
After crashing the playoffs as a happy-to-be-here upstart, the Wizards are aiming higher now.
Best of all, Pierce is empowering his younger teammates.
He's inspiring Bradley Beal, per CSN Washington's Ben Standig: "I was telling Brad [Beal] on the bench in the fourth quarter that when I look at this team from top to bottom, our depth, when guys get hurt…You see similarities to teams that have made long playoff runs and made it to the finals."
And he's pumping up John Wall, as he did after that huge win over the Celtics, per Truth About It's Rashad Mobley: "He’s our leader," Pierce said of Wall. "Everyone talks about Paul the veteran, but he’s our leader."
The final stage of Pierce's rare, successful evolution will come long after he's gone—when we see his students become teachers themselves. Twelve or 15 years from now, when we watch a weathered, weary Wall and Beal dispensing wisdom and contributing in short bursts, we'll see the full payoff of Pierce's influence.
It's hard to age as well as Pierce has, but his example could make it easier for the next crop.
As long as they're willing to follow the blueprint.
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