Paul Pierce Doesn’t Believe Draymond Green Can Be an All-NBA Defensive Player in Any Other Era

Beef prices in the U.S. have spiked in recent months. That’s caused many Americans to cut down on their steak and hamburger consumption, but there’s enough beef in the NBA to go around for everyone. Klay Thompson and Ja Morant have been at it again, and the Draymond Green-Kenyon Martin feud is still going strong.

For any NBA fan who’s been asleep for the past week or so, Draymond and K-Mart have been going at it. Martin has taken multiple shots at Draymond over the years, and he recently implied that Draymond is a fake tough guy. Draymond finally responded last week by saying he was disappointed that a fellow Saginaw, Michigan native wouldn’t show him some love.

He then dropped a bomb by calling Martin an “underachiever,” and now it seems that everyone has to weigh in. On the newest episode of No Fouls Given, Paul Pierce and Danny Green gave their two cents, and what they had to say might spark an entirely new feud.

Both guys agreed that K-Mart was a better player, but that Green had piled up more accolades in his career. That seems besides the point Draymond was trying to make, since he never explicitly said he was better than Martin, just that he had done more with his talent than Martin had done with his.

Pierce made an interesting point that there are players like Penny Hardaway and Grant Hill who he believes were better than he was, but he had better careers than them due to injuries and other circumstances. He then ran through Martin’s best qualities — “I had to play against him in his young days and his prime. He was a lob threat, he was a defensive threat, he was intimidating, he ran the court.”

He did give Draymond some props by saying both players “were good for what they both brought,” but he seemed to go out of his way to torch Draymond from that point on. He said, “K-Mart, if he had a team like Draymond, I think they still win four championships.”

That’s a point that Warriors fans would certainly disagree on, as Draymond was the glue that has held the team together with his defensive ability and playmaking. Sure he’s gotten to play with Steph Curry and Kevin Durant, but Martin played on some really good Nets teams alongside Hall-of-Famer Jason Kidd, yet he never won a title, let alone four.

This was a wild take on its own, but later Pierce took the disrespect to new heights. “I don’t think you can put Draymond defensively in any other area to where he’d be an All-Defensive player. To where he has to switch onto Shaq, Alonzo, Dikembe, KG.”

This is a crazy argument from Pierce, since a) Draymond has tailored his game for the era he plays in, not one that no longer exists. His defensive versatility and ability to switch onto practically any player from this era is his calling card, and Pierce did admit that Draymond was the greatest of his era in that regard. And b) who was guarding Shaq anyway? If that’s the criteria, then nobody is a good defensive player.

Somehow, players still made the All-Defensive Team during Shaq’s era. Draymond’s ability to shut guys down 1-on-1, combined with his high basketball IQ, physicality and smarts off the ball would have made him succeed in any era. He wouldn’t have had to guard Shaq because there’d be a traditional center on his team to do that.

At the end of the day, Draymond wasn’t even arguing that he’s better than Kenyon Martin. He simply didn’t understand why someone he used to root for couldn’t do the same for him, and when the fight came to him, he laid out the data that showed that his career has been much more successful. Pierce’s argument doesn’t change that.

Would Draymond trade his career for Martin’s? Not a chance. Has he gotten the most, both individually and team-wise, out of his talent? Yes he has.