We all have our vices. For some, it’s gambling. For others, it’s drinking. For Kevin Garnett, it’s the piece of tape that keeps his hoodie on his head. And for Paul Pierce, it’s hookah.
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Ticket and the Truth, the podcast co-hosted by the two former Celtics and fast friends, gave Garnett some space to poke fun at Pierce on the most recent episode. The conversation started with a helpful information section about the warning signs of bloodclots as part of a conversation about Damian Lillard’s recently diagnosed deep vein thrombosis, before KG called Pierce a “hookaholic.”
Taking it in good fun, Pierce continued to explain a former injury while Garnett kept joking about Pierce’s love of hookah before Pierce himself posed a question: “Who smokes more hookah, me, Shaq, or Hookah Doncic?”
Without missing a beat, Garnett immediately said, “You,” before exclaiming that if Luka “smokes like you do, he smoking for real.”
Pierce’s history with hookah has been largely unspoken outside of the video he posted that led to his eventual suspension and then firing by ESPN. According to Pierce, however, the employment was not built to last anyway.
“I was done with them, anyway. There’s a lot of stuff you can’t say over there & you have to talk about LeBron all the time,” he said. “Come on, I didn’t do anything illegal. These motherf—–s in the Hall of Fame, some did [c*caine], f—ing battery. What the f— did I do?”
Aside from this, Pierce also indulged in his affinity for hookah by opening up his own hookah lounge in Hollywood called ‘The Truth Hollywood’.
Shaq and Luka’s history with hookah
Shaq is known as one of the worst spenders in NBA history, notably having the largest purchase in Wal-Mart history (this was self-proclaimed, however). According to his own admission on Inside the NBA on TNT, he was also an avid hookah smoker, so much so that he once bought a hookah store just because he didn’t have much else to do.
In this way, there has been a place for stars to enjoy things in their own time, a privilege that all players should be afforded. And yet, over this past summer, when Luka Doncic spent his summer enjoying his life, along with the occasional hookah or beer, the NBA fanbase responded by giving him a new nickname: Hookah Doncic.
It’s not entirely untrue to say that this nickname had massive ripples. The Mavericks would later trade Doncic in no small part due to his perception inside the Mavs organization as being lazy and undisciplined.
Maybe, just maybe, it was because they saw the nicknames and the posts a few months earlier.
