Paul Pierce and ESPN were never meant to be.
The former Celtics star was fired in April following a video he posted on Instagram Live that showed him gambling and smoking with some friends in the presence of twerking strippers. In a new interview with Sports Illustrated tied to his upcoming Hall of Fame induction, Pierce admitted that the partnership was never a “great fit.”
Pierce said he was “done” with ESPN by the time the incident occurred, citing the travel and the way too demanding network executives as reasons he never loved the job. There was also the matter of having to talk about his former rival on the air ad nauseam.
“There’s a lot of stuff over there that you can’t say. And you have to talk about LeBron all the time,” he said.
Pierce also explained why he didn’t apologize for the video, despite advice from his agent Jeff Schwartz, who didn’t want the fallout with ESPN to impact Pierce’s chances at the Hall of Fame.
“Come on, I didn’t do anything illegal,” Pierce said. “These motherf*ckers in the Hall of Fame, some did [cocaine], fucking battery. What the fuck did I do? I was just having a good time. All the people coming after me, half you motherf*ckers do the same shit. You’re just hiding it. And you all are married while you’re doing it. I’m divorced. I’m retired. I’m having fun.”
In fact, instead of issuing an apology, Pierce dissed ESPN in late May after revealing that he hit the lottery with cryptocurrency Ethereum. “@espn I don’t need you,” he tweeted. “I got @ethereum_max I made more money with this crypto in the past month then I did with y’all in a year. TRUTH shall set u Free.”
Pierce became an analyst for ESPN’s NBA Countdown and The Jump after retiring from the NBA in 2017. In August 2017, he became a regular studio analyst, prior to the start of the 2017-18 season.
