Las Vegas ? Paul Pierce has kept his eyes wide open in this summer of stars on the move. He has noticed some of his peers asking to be traded, and, yes, he admitted this week, he has considered joining the conga line.
Playing on a young team coming off a lousy season, Pierce felt the temptation to leave for more victorious pastures, but ultimately decided he should stick it out.
“I know what the easy thing to do is,” former Kansas University standout Pierce said. “You’ve got the Tracy McGradys and the Vince Carters saying, ‘Just trade me to a team where I can win a championship.’ You know, that sounds so good when you say it.
“Then I was thinking about where I’m at and how frustrating things got last year. . . . You know, it has crossed my mind. Me and my agent talked about it. We talked about asking for a trade.”
But Pierce then made a trip. “The Truth” went looking for some truth. The same guy who is here in Sin City this week establishing a residence in Nevada to avoid state taxes (“hey, baby, that’s 6 percent I’m saving”) reached into his pocket for a flight to Orlando.
“I went down there a couple of weeks ago to just hang with Doc,” said Pierce, referring to new coach Doc Rivers. “He talked about the way he wanted to use me and the things he expects from me. It was great. I mean, after hearing what he had to say, I have a lot of confidence in Doc and what we can do with this team.
“Then (Tuesday) I had a talk with Danny (Ainge, GM) and he gave me some good reassurances about what we’re doing. I’m here for the long term.”
Pierce didn’t deal well with changes that defined the 2003-04 season. “But, man, it was a hard year. No team or player should ever have to go through a year like that. We traded something like nine guys and then the coach resigned,” Pierce said.
With Juwan Howard gone and Pat Garrity coming off knee surgery, Gooden could become too important of a piece to the puzzle at power forward to be traded.
The thought of Gooden as a steadying influence on a team coming off a 21-61 season would seem strange.
He won’t turn 23 until September, and his play was often inconsistent or worse during his first full year with the Magic.
But unless the Magic expect Howard to average more than 36 minutes a game as a rookie, as LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony did a year ago in their first seasons, general manager John Weisbrod could be reluctant to part with Gooden, who has stayed healthy.