Boston Celtics: Mark Cuban reveals Paul Pierce was nearly a Maverick
Boston Celtics fans are no strangers to blockbuster deals breaking down at the 11th hour. Having Danny Ainge as the general manager condition Cs fans to getting their hopes up before ultimately being let down by a trade falling through.
Well, as it turns out, Ainge wasn’t the only reason why deals fell through, and sometimes said broken-down trades led to a good result for Celtics fans.
That happened in approximately 2007 when Paul Pierce was nearly sent out of Boston in a deal that would have sent him to the Dallas Mavericks.
Mark Cuban revealed as much today on Twitter in a reply to a Mavericks fan page:
It gets better. We had a deal done. We had a 3 way trade done. All teams agreed to their part of the deal. When we get on the trade call, the 3rd team killed the deal because they didnt know that a first was going to the Celtics. They chose not to do the deal at all.
— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) September 7, 2021
To be a fly on the wall for those negotiations…
Obviously, knowing the third team in the deal will be what keeps many Dallas fans up at night, but the deal not going down directly led to Banner #17 as the Cs were able to pull off separate deals for Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen leading to the ‘Big 3’ era in Boston.
Pierce missed out on a chance to join a Mavericks trio that included both Dirk Nowitski and Jason Kidd, though. You could debate the merits of that team in the Western Conference contending with Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol and those dynastic Los Angeles Lakers of the late-2000s in his prime, but that would have been one difficult team to defend.
History wanted a Big 3 instead, though. At least Boston Celtics fans would say that’s a better outcome.