Paul Pierce went viral and Jayhawks fans *might* not be surprised by why
Right now, there’s no basketball. There’s no baseball. There’s no soccer, and the Tokyo Olympics are looking at a year-long postponement. There’s nothing besides the NFL offseason—and I gotta say, it’s so on brand that the NFL is just motoring on like nothing is happening. All sports fans are scrambling for something to engage with.
While we’re not getting any new footage, we’ve got trusty archival content at our fingertips—an infinite amount of it. When I woke up to see that Paul Pierce was trending, I assumed that it because he crafted a particularly crazy take on The Jump, or something. Instead, it was ancient footage of baby-faced Pierce competing in the McDonald’s All-American dunk competition. Here it is:
As you can see, it all goes very poorly. It’s the polar opposite of performances Jayhawk fans might remember from that event—Lester Earl (he beats Kobe), Josh Selby and (then-KU-bound) DeShawn Stevenson. But Jayhawks fans from the mid-90s might not be surprised by Pierce’s now-viral performance.
In the fall of 1995, Paul Pierce was a freshman at Kansas and I was a nine-year-old living in the KC suburbs. Pierce is the first Jayhawk I remember distinctly as a recruit in his career timeline—coming from California, Roy William’s ace-in-the-hole recruiting-wise, he was very touted to the point where he was getting some ink in the Kansas City Star. I knew his name before Late Night that year, which is a thing that had not happened in previous seasons.
In the mid-’90s—and especially to kids—Michael Jordan is basketball dominance incarnate. In my imagination, any highly touted shooting guard would surely follow that mold; an above-the-rim-living competitor hellbound on swallowing opponents’ souls. I remember him rinsing people in the Late Night scrimmage, and that me and my cousin Marshall spent our entire walk back to his house on Illinois Street beaming about the performance. But I also distinctly remember that he wasn’t doing it by dunking on everyone.
Pierce was not that kind of player.
The memory is a funny thing, but I definitely remember some big Pierce Yamborghinis in college. In the extended cut of the Jayhawks’ famous intro video—which is probably the Pierce-at-Kansas clip most people think of—Pierce is dunking. Whether it was a Jacque Vaughn lob, or that sick reverse at :48 in that first linked video that I do not remember at all, Pierce could get up there and do damage. Some of the dunks in the Mizzou Big Eight tourney game are downright ferocious. But his dominance (when Williams begrudging allowed a starter to be dominant) was more floorbound and crafty, even at Kansas. It was hard to see that then, but looking back through the lens of his Hall of Fame-level NBA career, the picture is much clearer.
In the NBA, Pierce made his living by drawing contact, getting to the line, and keeping everyone off balance. Watching these videos now, it’s striking how much contact he is generating at Kansas. He was hard to guard, but it wasn’t because he was jumping over people. In 2003-2004, he led the NBA in FTA, and for the rest of the decade he was typically in the picture there alongside much slash-ier, dunk-ier, higher-usage players (Kobe, Amare Stoudemire, Wade, Iverson).
In that sense, he was the proto-Harden—Pierce’s sensibility is still reflected in the modern game. So even though a younger generation might remember Pierce for this:*
*I too find this image iconic
I’ll always remember Pierce for his craftiness, his Mashburn-ian ability to have 20 already before you even notice that he’s scored, and his appetite for the biggest shot in a game or series. His time as a Jayhawk was cut short by Rhode Island (hold up… Rhode Island scored 52 in the second half?!) and he never got his I CALLED GAME moment at Kansas. But he’s a Jayhawk legend all the same.
Lastly, I return to this image a lot:
Yes, this image is cursed. But look closer: that undershirt Pierce is wearing is absolutely the 1000-point scorers t-shirt every male child within 100 miles of Lawrence owned. That’s the top of Raef’s head! It makes me think of the days before performance undershirts, when a baggy Hanes Beefy T from a three-pack fit the bill just fine. Simpler times, friends.