Paul Pierce disliked working for ESPN: ‘You have to talk about LeBron all the time’

He went on for a few minutes, riffing, he thought, for a couple hundred people. When he finished, he deleted it. He didn’t know IG Lives can be recorded (they can) and reposted (it was). Pierce went home that night thinking no one noticed. He woke up the next day and discovered everyone had.

The relationship between Pierce and the network had become strained over the past two years. Pierce hated the travel. Network executives didn’t think he was working hard enough. The video, industry sources told Sports Illustrated, was the last straw. “I was done with them, anyway,” says Pierce between pulls of lemon mint. “It wasn’t a great fit. There’s a lot of stuff over there that you can’t say. And you have to talk about LeBron all the time.”

“People wouldn’t believe how often we argued,” says Pierce. He recalls countless meetings with Rivers and Ainge that led to heated arguments about his shot selection. “They were always telling me how to play,” says Pierce. “They wanted me to pass the ball more. Well, who did they want me to pass it to? Jiří Welsch? S—, I’d rather take a bad shot than pass it to Jiří Welsch.”