Roy Williams had already established a California recruiting pipeline in his beginnings as KU head coach, landing such stars as Adonis Jordan, Jacque Vaughn, Jerod Haase and Scot Pollard.
But now he was going after his big prize, an extremely gifted 6-7 small forward from Inglewood High School in Los Angeles named Paul Anthony Pierce who was being recruited by every big-time program in the land.
Pierce, who admired Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan growing up, had come a long way on the prep scene since being cut from the varsity team his freshman year. He barely made the team as a 5-8 sophomore before eventually growing and becoming a McDonald’s All-American and California Gatorade Player of the Year as a senior, when he averaged 24.5 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 4.5 assists per game.
Williams dearly wanted Pierce to join a quality team returning for the 1995-96 season, which included Vaughn, Haase, Pollard and Raef LaFrentz. The former KU coach talked about his recruiting pitch in his autobiography: “Hard Work: A Life on and off the Court.”
“Recruiting is like putting together a puzzle, and I mean that literally,” Williams wrote. “When we recruited Paul Pierce at Kansas, we had four starters coming back, but we had no small forward. I asked my assistant Steve Robinson to make a little puzzle. He cut pieces out of a cardboard box; there were four corner pieces that represented our four starters and he left the centerpiece missing. We sent Paul the four corner pieces and then two days later, we sent the centerpiece in the shape of a star with Paul’s picture on it and a message that read, You are the missing piece to the puzzle. That’s what Paul turned out to be when we got him. Recruiting is about convincing kids that they are the missing piece that we need to be complete.”
Pierce, who scored 28 points in the McDonald’s All-American game, just two points shy of tying Jordan’s record, was convinced he could be that missing piece. He also told his website (www.paulpierce.net) what sold him on the Jayhawks and coach Williams.
"He didn't promise me anything,” Pierce said. "He said, 'You're going to go here, you're going to work just like everybody else, and I'm going to stay on you.’ That was enough for me."
Pierce elaborated on his decision to attend KU in an interview with The Sporting News in 1998.
“I wanted to go somewhere where someone would push me,” he said. “If I went to a team where everything was built around me, I’d probably get lazy and spoiled. I wanted to go to a team that also had a chance to win a national championship, where I’d get good exposure and have a good head coach — somewhere I could learn.”
Pierce averaged 11.9 points per game and claimed Big Eight Freshman of the Year honors in 1996. KU went 29-5 that season, won the Big Eight Championship, and advanced to the Elite Eight.
He improved dramatically his sophomore season (16.3 ppg) before becoming an All-American as a junior (20.4 ppg), when he became the first KU player since Danny Manning to average over 20 points per game. Pierce truly came the go-to player once LaFrentz went down with a broken bone in his right hand in December 1997 and missed six weeks. Pierce averaged 22.5 points and shot 50.8 percent from the field in eight of the nine games without LaFrentz.
Pierce, who received back-to-back Big 12 Tournament MVP awards his sophomore and junior seasons, always came up big in crunch time.
"The bigger the game, the bigger he played," Williams said.
Ryan Robertson, who played with Pierce in the McDonald’s All-American game in 1995 before joining him at KU for three seasons, marveled at Pierce’s skills.
“Best player I ever played with,” Robertson said in a 2007 interview. “My freshman roommate. Just an absolute hunger for basketball.”
Despite playing just three years, Pierce is the eighth-leading scorer in KU history with 1,768 points (16.4 ppg). He’s gone on to become one of the top scorers in NBA annals with the Boston Celtics and now Brooklyn Nets, and will one day be enshrined in the Hall of Fame.
No comments:
Post a Comment