Paul Pierce

The Boston sports world is abuzz about the game one victory over the Lakers and Paul Pierce's return to action after his knee injury.

For the past few days I've been thinking about Paul Pierce. Mainly I've been wondering if he's a Hall of Fame player.

Pierce was taken 10th overall in the 1998 draft. Of the people taken ahead of him you can make arguments for only Dirk Nowitzki and maybe - just maybe - Vince Carter being better players. Lots of teams screwed up not taking Pierce. Heck - he wasn't even the first player taken from his college team (Raef LaFrentz went 4th to the Nuggets).

Pierce is closing in on 17,000 career points and has so far averaged 23.1 points / 6.4 rebounds and 3.9 assists per game. Are those Hall of Fame numbers? He's been to 6 All-Star games but has never made better than 3rd team All-NBA.

Overall currently he sits in 77th place on the all-time scoring list and 6th on the all-time list of Celtics scorers. Next season though he should pass both Bob Cousy (just 15 more points) and Kevin McHale (390 more points). I wouldn't argue that Pierce was as good as either or even close but if he keeps compiling points then I can see him coming close to or passing Adrian Dantley's total of 23,177. Dantley is a Hall of Fame player and I think Pierce compares very favorably to him.

My guess is a Championship this year cements Pierce's place in the Hall. Otherwise he'll have to keep plugging to get close to Dantley's numbers to get in.