Paul Pierce wonders if Lakers’ LeBron James voted him as the GOAT

Paul Pierce has a theory…

During a recent poll conducted by The Athletic, it turned out that former Boston Celtics star Paul Pierce got a lone vote for the Greatest of All Time honor from an unnamed player.

Could that lone vote be from Los Angeles Lakers superstar forward LeBron James? Pierce is not eliminating that theory.

While on Tuesday’s episode of FS1’s Undisputed, Pierce wondered about the possibility that it was the leader of the Lakers who cast that GOAT vote.

“What if LBJ voted for me?” Pierce asked Keyshawn Johnson and Skip Bayless. “I played against him, he must think something. What do you think about that? What do you think about that? We had a lot of battles. Come on now, we had some tough battles. We had some tough battles. It could have been LB.”

Was it LeBron James who voted for Paul Pierce as the GOAT?
Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James (23) and Denver Nuggets guard Jamal Murray (27) in the first quarter during game two of the first round for the 2024 NBA playoffs at Ball Arena.
Mandatory Credit: Ron Chenoy-USA TODAY Sports
Indeed, long before James first signed with the Lakers, he and Pierce used to have plenty of head-to-heads back in their days in the Eastern Conference when the four-time league Most Valuable Player was still suiting up for the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Miami Heat. James is definitely familiar with what type of a basketball player Pierce was on the court and he can’t deny that Pierce was a terrific baller and fierce competitor. After all, Pierce has an NBA ring, is a 10-time NBA All-Star, and is part of the NBA 75th Anniversary Team.

All that being said, it is still surprising to many to see Pierce get a vote as the greatest basketball player to ever set foot on a court. That vote must have been from someone who didn’t take the exercise too seriously. Imagine all the legends of the game that that voter had to mentally ignore in order to come down with a conclusion that Pierce is the all-time best player in basketball history. That means, that from that voter’s perspective, based on his vote, Pierce had a better career than the likes of Lakers great Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Tim Duncan, among others, and let alone Michael Jordan and James.

Pierce did not directly say it, but he must have been just as surprised as so many people when he learned that someone actually voted for him as the GOAT.