- In a different universe, Quentin Richardson
might have become the next Paul Pierce.
Instead, he became Pierce's foremost hater.
In October of 1997, Kansas Jayhawks star Paul Pierce
was a junior and likely headed
to the NBA the following spring.
Meanwhile, one of the nation's top high school recruits,
who happened to play the same position,
was at least 80% leaning towards attending Kansas.
So, when that recruit, Chicago's Quentin Richardson,
came to visit, Pierce served as host
for the kid who might take his spot.
Whatever happened on that visit,
it didn't push Richardson over the edge.
He shocked the Jayhawks by committing to DePaul,
his local school.
There he formed an exciting, local tandem
with another future NBAer, Bobby Simmons.
And he promised to make a Final Four run,
that didn't happen.
While Pierce got drafted and began his career
with the Celtics, Richardson's Blue Demons
didn't even make the final four of the NIT
his freshman year.
And they fell in the first round of the NCAA tournament
when he was a sophomore.
Q Rich entered the 2000 NBA Draft
and got picked 18th overall by the Clippers.
He joined an NBA in which Pierce
was already a burgeoning star.
Richardson, meanwhile, became one member in a very young,
very fun, very bad, Los Angeles team that went O and 6
against Pierce's Celtics through Q's first three seasons
in the league.
The only place Richardson could best Pierce at that point
was in the 2002 3-point contest.
It wasn't until 2004, that Richardson beat Pierce
in an actual head-to-head match-up
and earned the Clippers a victory.
And Q really relished the occasion.
But, if there was any beef between the two,
fans couldn't smell it yet.
That wouldn't happen until years later
when Richardson was in New York.
He joined the Knicks after a big year as a sharpshooter
for Mike D'Antoni's terrific Phoenix Suns.
But, the Knicks were nothing like the Suns
and Q's very first game in orange and blue
was a deflating overtime loss to the Celtics
on opening night.
Just like in L.A., Richardson's team got torched repeatedly
by Pierce and friends, only now he was in the same division.
So, the losses came more than just twice a year.
While Pierce dominated the Knicks, he couldn't lead
the Celtics to the top of the Eastern Conference.
So, in the 2007 off-season, Boston went out
and got him co-stars, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.
Richardson wasn't impressed, said he wasn't in awe of them.
They hadn't won any championships
and weren't that deep of a team.
The next day, Boston beat New York by 45 points.
One of the worst losses in Knicks franchise history.
And Pierce let the game do the responding to Richardson.
Boston, would by the way, go on to win
that season's championship.
But, not before the beef flared up.
On MLK Day 2008, the Knicks hosted the Celtics
for the first time since that embarrassing blowout.
The Knicks got crushed again,
and this time Richardson and Pierce got into it.
Both were ejected when a verbal altercation turned physical,
and Richardson threatened to fight Pierce in the tunnel,
although that never actually happened.
The Celtics just kind of laughed
at the unevenness of the feud.
Then rocked the Knicks again a month later
while their announcers called Richardson fat.
- [Gorman] Does Richardson look big to you?
- [Heinsohn] Richardson looks like he's 20 pounds,
25 pounds overweight.
- This was not a pleasant time to be a Knicks fan,
I can tell you.
Anyway, Boston made the finals while New York
didn't even make the playoffs.
Pierce got his famous ride in a wheelchair
and then he got a ring.
Did the success of a rival shut Richardson up?
Absolutely not, the teams met early the next season
and Boston won yet again.
Quentin and Paul argued during the game, and Richardson
kept right on running his mouth after the loss.
Saying stuff like "Okay, Paul's won a championship,
congratulations, but now he's go to do it again"
and wondering stuff like "if these guys would be talking
to us like that if we weren't in basketball game
and didn't have referees, it wouldn't be the same story."
Okay, Q.
Anyway, Richardson wasn't long for the Knicks.
He got traded to the Heat in the 2009 off-season
and now found himself on a team
that actually won things sometimes.
And lo and behold, in Q Rich's only season with the Heat,
Miami faced Boston in the first round of the playoffs.
The Pierce-Richardson beef had its biggest stage yet,
and it performed.
With just seconds remaining in the Celtics game one victory,
Richardson was guarding Pierce when Pierce crumpled
onto the sideline with an apparent injury.
Richardson walked up to the supine Pierce,
and suggested the Celtics star was totally okay,
that nobody touched him,
and he was just finding any excuse
to take a break at the end of a game.
Kevin Garnett showed his appreciation
for Richardson's concern by elbowing him in the face.
Which got him suspended for game two.
And Richardson earned himself a fine too,
if not for what he did on the court,
then for what he said after the game.
- Nobody got no business, talking to him.
He on the ground crying, I don't know what was going on.
Two actresses over there, that's what they are.
When they not those characters that they portray
in this movie, they not who they say they are,
Garnett and Pierce.
I don't like them.
- Pierce blew that stuff off.
- [Interviewer] Why does he have such,
I don't wanna say disrespect,
but such disdain towards you guys?
- I don't know, ask him. (laughs)
Ask him.
Man, he's just been nothing but talk, truthfully.
I'm not even going to get into that.
- But by game 3, Richardson and Pierce
were once again barking.
And once again Pierce's team emerged victorious,
this time because Pierce himself drilled a game winner.
Game Four?
Still barking.
And for once Richardson outplayed Pierce.
Scoring 20 points in a Miami victory to avoid a sweep.
But Boston won the series in 5,
and that was the end of that chapter of the beef.
Q's next stop was a two year stint in Orlando,
where Pierce on one occasion engineered a 27 point
Celtics comeback by repeatedly toasting Richardson.
A few months later,
Boston clinched the division by beating the Magic again.
This time Pierce ran Richardson over,
then later drilled the game clinching jumper over him.
By this point Richardson was on the fringes of the league.
He didn't play any of the 2012-2013 season
until the very end, when the Knicks signed him again,
days before a playoff series versus the Celtics,
and possibly just to annoy Pierce.
The Knicks actually won that round.
Maybe the only significant victory a Q-Rich team
could claim over Pierce's Celtics,
except Richardson barely played.
He got just 8 minutes the entire series.
His final minutes in the NBA.
So, what was all of that?
Whence came the beef?
In a player's tribune article in early 2018,
Richardson mentioned visiting Pierce at Kansas,
and getting into it with him on the court.
But he didn't go any deeper into the beef.
Did something happen during that campus visit?
Did something happen early in their NBA careers?
Richardson made several remarks over the years
suggesting Pierce challenged him on the court
but wasn't as tough off of it.
And maybe that's all it was.
Maybe Richardson just loathed the guy
whose college footsteps he declined to follow,
and who held a 23 and 5 record against him
in head to head regular season match-ups,
and who got himself a ring,
then helped make sure Richardson didn't do so himself.
Maybe in Paul Pierce,
Quentin Richardson sees the career he could have enjoyed
had things broken differently for him.
Whatever the case, this mysterious beef
caused multiple flare-ups over the years.
And as far as we know, it remains unresolved.
Thanks a lot for watching.
If you'd like to see more beef between
a really great NBA player and a kind of okay one,
then check out this beef history episode about
Lebron James and DeShawn Stevenson.
Or you can just watch this, I really don't care.