At his Hall of Fame party, Miami Heat legend Dwyane Wade supposedly confronted former teammate Antoine Walker for not sticking up for him against Paul Pierce.
“Dwyane Wade had a celebration for going to the Hall of Fame, so I went to pay my respects in Chicago,” Walker said. “And guess what conversation he wanted to have? This one (relating to Pierce).
“Oh, no joke. This is — we celebratin’ his Hall of Fame. He like, ‘Bro, why you ain’t defend me, man? You know we from Chicago.’ I’m like, ‘D, he tough.’ I told D — I said, ‘He tough.’ I said, ‘Man, Paul tough as they come.’ I ain’t seen — Paul ain’t back down from nobody. I saw Paul go against everybody, bro. He don’t back down. … I seen him put numbers up against everybody.
“So, I think the way Paul did it, probably should’ve probably gave a little bit more respect to D-Wade than just flat out said he better than him, but that’s how confident Paul is when it comes to basketball.”
Pierce and Wade’s beef seemingly stems from the former’s 2019 comments on ESPN when he said he had a superior NBA career than Wade.
“That’s easy,” Pierce said when asked who the better player was. “I can say that off the bat — that’s me.”
Interestingly, Amin Elhassan — who formerly served as the assistant director of basketball operations for the Phoenix Suns — said back in February this year that plenty of NBA players agree with Pierce’s take but are afraid to say so publicly.
“Dan [Le Batard], I’ma say this about Paul,” Elhassan began. “Paul I said this — when you said Dwyane Wade, you made your comparison to Dwyane Wade’s career — everyone went crazy. I said, ‘What Paul said is something that a lotta NBA players think.’ And I’m not even agreeing with you — to be honest — but I understood what you were saying was from the heart and the truth, because I know there are a lot of players who think that but aren’t brave enough to say it out loud.”
Walker and Wade were teammates on the Heat for two seasons, from the 2005-06 season through the 2006-07 campaign. In Walker’s first season in Miami, he was a valuable complementary piece for a Heat team that went on to win the 2006 NBA title.
He averaged 11-plus points per game in all four of Miami’s series in the 2006 playoffs. In the NBA Finals versus Dirk Nowitzki and the Dallas Mavericks, Walker averaged 13.8 points, 5.5 rebounds and 2.2 assists per contest on 39.1 percent shooting from the field.
Walker averaged the third-most points per game on the Heat during their playoff run with 13.3, which was behind only star big man Shaquille O’Neal and Wade.
But before teaming up with Wade and the Heat and winning a title, Walker played alongside Pierce on the Boston Celtics. While he and Pierce never led the Celtics to a title as teammates, the two helped Boston reach the Eastern Conference Finals in 2002, where the team lost to Kenyon Martin, Jason Kidd and the New Jersey Nets in six games.
Walker spent a larger portion of his NBA career with Boston than he did with Miami, considering he played eight seasons with the former and two with the latter across his 12 seasons in the pros.
Hopefully, Walker can use his personal connections with both Pierce and Wade to help squash the beef between two of the better players of their era.