This is actually one of the more interesting VS threads. I'm sick of the KG/Dirk ones...

If we're talking about who we'd rather have on our team, it obviously depends on what kind of player you want, and these two, although they have certain similarities, are on pretty opposite ends of the spectrum.

Pierce is a bona fide scorer. Idc who you put on him -- over a large enough sample size, he'll get his points, just like any other great scorer. For an aggressive wing, he also assists and boards well, and he's clutch. Defense, not so much, especially when on those shitty Celtics teams. It's not so much inability, but let's not pretend like he was ever a physically dominating player, either.

Scottie does most things a bit better, and plays D a whole lot better, obviously. I don't think he was a better playmaker, actually; just more conscious of his playmaking role, whereas Pierce had to score, score, score if the Celtics were gonna win double digit games in the post-Toine, pre-Big 3 era. Scottie was a better rebounder. Idc what the numbers show in this case -- I don't remember Scottie that much, but I've seen enough full Bulls games to realize this. Pierce is a better rebounder than people seem to remember, but Scottie was just better.

I don't buy the whole alpha-beta thing. But I will say that Scottie might have have been a bit too self-conscious of off court things than I would like. Yeah, he was forever (and will forever be, unfortunately) in MJ's shadow, his contract blew serious donkey d*ck, and he never got enough credit, even in the wake of Jordan's retirement(s), but bitching out of that last play was ridiculous. And this wasn't young-Scottie; he should have known better. For what it's worth, Pierce, one of my favorites all time, was a dick earlier in his own career.

I think it's interesting that they're underrated for opposite reasons. Scottie's teams were too successful, and Pierce's were too unsuccessful. You've got Pierce being rated higher in these ESPN pre-season rankings when he's 33-34-35 than 7 years earlier when he was in his prime, dropping 24-27 ppg, and all around better stats.

Just shows you that public perception is A. fickle, B. arbitrary, C. mostly irrelevant (when deciding who actually was a better player). I would say it is relevant in talking about impact on the sport; whether or not you think Kareem or Wilt are better than MJ, the latter has had more impact on the sport, even if most of that was a product of the time-period/perfect storm.