Quentin Richardson almost followed in Paul Pierce’s footsteps. While Pierce was a junior star at Kansas, he hosted Richardson’s campus visit. The high school senior from Chicago was said to be “80 percent” leaning toward attending Kansas, taking over for Pierce as the team’s star perimeter scorer. Perhaps Richardson would then follow Pierce to the NBA and become a star there, too.
It didn’t happen. Pierce went on to play a long, excellent career, winning a ring with the Celtics. Richardson chose to attend DePaul instead, did a lot of losing there, then headed to the NBA and kept right on losing with teams like the Clippers and Knicks ... and losing playoff games to Pierce when he made it to a good team like the Heat.
Perhaps because of something that happened during the campus visit, or perhaps because of their interactions on the NBA court, these two never got along. As NBA opponents, they bickered and got each other ejected from games. Off the floor, Richardson repeatedly needled Pierce through the media, never eliciting much of a response. Pierce did most of the winning and Richardson did most of the talking. All told, it was a bitter, one-sided rivalry with multiple flareups of beef.
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