Paul Pierce is 1 bad take away from filling up his punch card and giving us a freebie

Paul Pierce has been a hilarious addition to ESPN and ABC’s NBA broadcasts since he retired from being a traveling fake leader in the league after his long Celtics reign ended. This dude is trying to be the Starbucks of bad takes: there’s two on every corner. His take last week on the end of Dwyane Wade’s career is a perfect example.

Michelle Beadle, having fun, asked Pierce if he’d had a better career than Wade as the three-time champ prepares to retire this week. There are two options here: humble and circumspect, or brash and hilarious. We know where The Truth is going with it.

Pierce’s immediate response was to claim that if he had Shaquille O’Neal and/or LeBron James as teammates in his prime, he’d have won “five or six” championships, which is ludicrous, because Pierce had Kevin Garnett as a teammate for a number of years just outside Pierce’s own prime and won exactly one championship.

Wade helped Shaq to Big Diesel’s only post-Lakers title, and had an enormous role in two of LeBron’s three titles. He was also just like plainly better on both sides of the ball overall. He’s the second- or third-best two-guard ever. Pierce is the ... 10th best small forward? Come on. This is hilarious.

For what it’s worth, Team Wade got after it this weekend. Wade quote-tweeted a Pierce diss and Gabrielle Union argued that players should stop tearing each other down. But Wade’s teenage son Zaire had the championship level comments, saying (with some emoji omitted): “I don’t wanna hear it. Dude played 19 years and won 1 ring. Not to mention we did knock them out of the playoffs right? Oh aight. Now that’s ‘The Truth.’”

~ Never Anger a Teenager on the Internet ~

Yet another L for PPierce. But that ESPN money is pretty darn good.

Heat 109, Raptors 117 (OT)
Spurs 112, Cavaliers 90
Thunder 132, Wolves 126
Hornets 104, Pistons 91
Nets 108, Pacers 96
Mavericks 129, Grizzlies 127 (OT)
Suns 113, Rockets 149
Clippers 104, Warriors 131
Nuggets 108, Blazers 115
Pelicans 133, Kings 129
Jazz 109, Lakers 113

All times Eastern. Games on League Pass unless otherwise noted.

Hornets at Cavaliers, 7
Grizzlies at Pistons, 7
Celtics at Wizards, 7, TNT
Sixers at Heat, 7:30
Knicks at Bulls, 8
Raptors at Timberwolves, 8
Warriors at Pelicans, 8
Suns at Mavericks, 8:30
Nuggets at Jazz, 9
Rockets at Thunder, 9:30, TNT
Blazers at Lakers, 10:30

An updated NBA playoff picture with seeding and all of that. We got a lot of resolution on Sunday, actually: the Nets clinched a playoff bid for the first time since 2015 and the Magic won the Southeast Division, clinching a spot. Congratulations to those fan bases. The Heat may have played themselves out of a playoff bid with an overtime loss, but hope remains (slightly) alive. The Hornets got a huge win over the Pistons to make things even more interesting at the bottom of the East bracket.

Michael Pina on Al Horford as the Celtics’ savior.

Huge WNBA Draft preview package from our awesome women’s basketball team.

BEEF HISTORY: Chris Webber vs. Jalen Rose. Get learned.

Sabreena Merchant on how the Clippers and Lakers are always on divergent tracks, and how that makes the free agency race more interesting.

You just hate to see it.

Did you hear who got into the Basketball Hall of Fame over the weekend? Probably not. Isn’t that a problem for the Hall of Fame and for the sport? Yeah. Yeah it is.

Be excellent to each other.