Paul Pierce, who spent the better part of a decade trying to stop LeBron James and rarely had a kind word for him afterward, now says James has exerted the greatest influence on winning in NBA history — greater than Michael Jordan’s.
“His influence on winning is greater than Jordan,” Pierce said in a video clip shared this week. “Because when you look at the teams he took to the finals you know it’s like, ‘Damn. You dragged them?'”
The remark is the latest in a string of concessions from the former Celtics forward, who has spent his post-playing media career oscillating between provocative takes and occasional candor. In a recent interview with Fullcourtpass, Pierce called James “the GOAT” and predicted the 2025-26 season would be his last, saying James had “held the mantle for the league since Jordan left.” Back in 2023, when James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, Pierce tweeted congratulations and acknowledged him as the king of the league — albeit with a typo that read “GAOT.”
None of this came easily. Pierce and James collided four times in the playoffs between 2008 and 2012, splitting the series two apiece. Boston’s Big Three of Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen eliminated James’s undermanned Cleveland teams in 2008 and 2010. James returned the favor with Miami in 2011 and 2012, the latter sealed by his 45-point, 15-rebound Game 6 at TD Garden — a performance that effectively ended the Celtics’ era and cemented one of the great individual carry jobs in postseason history.
That game is a useful data point for Pierce’s argument, even if Pierce himself isn’t citing numbers. The analytical case for James as the premier winner-by-impact rests on roster context: Jordan’s six Finals teams featured a top-tier co-star in Scottie Pippen, a Hall of Fame rebounder in Dennis Rodman, and a deep bench. Jordan never lost a Finals, but he also never reached one without a stacked roster.
James has lost six Finals. He has also reached ten — and several of those appearances qualify as statistical anomalies. The 2007 Cavaliers went 50-32 with a starting lineup whose second-leading scorer was Zydrunas Ilgauskas. The 2018 Cavaliers traded nearly half their roster at the deadline, finished 50-32, and still reached the Finals because James posted a 34-point, 9-assist, 9-rebound postseason line. By win shares, the supporting casts on those two teams rank among the weakest ever to appear in a Finals.
Whether that makes James a greater winner than Jordan depends on how you define the word. Jordan’s 6-0 Finals record and six Finals MVPs are the cleanest résumé in the sport. James’s case is messier — more losses, more team-hopping, more variance — but it rests on a different metric: the gap between what his teams were and what they became with him on the floor.
Pierce, of all people, would know the size of that gap. He was on the other side of it for five years.
Watch
Sources
- Streamable video clip
- GiveMeSport — Paul Pierce snubbed Michael Jordan for NBA GOAT
- CBS News Boston — Paul Pierce gives LeBron credit, acknowledges him as king