LeBron James isn't a top five all-time player, says Paul Pierce.
The ex-Celtics star and current ESPN analyst made his case during Tuesday's episode of NBA Countdown. After he finished his piece there was a moment of silence from a trio combining host and co-analysts, who didn't quite know how to immediately respond. The YouTube video (embedded above) also had more down-votes than up-votes at last check, and Pierce is currently trending on Twitter.
Individually none of these things means a whole lot, but together they build a pretty good picture of how his comments were received.
You can watch the relevant portion around 1:32 above, or you can see what ESPN grabbed, trimmed down, and put on its social media immediately below. If you can't do sound where you're at, you can read a summary underneath that. In short, you got options.
Pierce says that his opinion was confirmed upon watching the final episode of The Last Dancethis past Sunday, when Michael Jordan made a comment about wanting to build the Bulls into a perpetual championship organization.
"I go back and I ask myself, 'What has LeBron done to build up any organization from the ground floor?'" Pierce said.
Let us stress that "Pierce said" part.
"All the great players built up their traditions and their organizations," he added. He then listed off Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, as examples of such players, and then said that Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal continued that tradition during their run in L.A.
After that he said that Larry Bird continued the Celtics' tradition of winning.
Then he cited Jordan and Tim Duncan as examples of guys who "started a tradition" during their respective runs in Chicago and San Antonio.
"So when I go back and I talk about these players and the top five players who not only built up organizations, or helped continue the organization's tradition, à la Kobe, I go back and I ask myself 'What has LeBron [done] to build up any organization from the ground floor?'" Pierce continued.
At that point co-host Jay Williams made it clear he wasn't buying this logic. Specifically, he didn't seem to see how this mattered when compiling a short-list for the best player(s) of all-time.
Immediately after that interjection, Pierce named Bill Russell as another guy who built a foundation, before re-running down the list of aforementioned guys.
He also doubled (tripled?) down on his remarks with a social media message, possibly after seeing his name on the side of Twitter:
If nothing else, he did get people talking about sports stuff:
We know we gave you options but, whatever, watch above.
