When Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen united as hardwood super-friends with the 2007-08 Celtics, the three long-established stars knew there would need to be sacrifices toward that common goal of winning a championship.
It wasn’t necessarily easy for them to do, but they sure made it look that way – they won 29 of their first 32 games en route to collecting the franchise’s 17th championship banner that June.
Pierce, who has been keeping a close eye on the current Celtics from his perch as an increasingly candid studio analyst for ESPN’s NBA Countdown, said during a recent phone conversation that in a sense, the challenges his Celtics faced a decade ago were in some ways easier to navigate than what the current Celtics are dealing with now.