Congrats, Truth

The Nevada bar exam is less than three weeks away, so I don't have much time for blogging these days, but...

With a three-pointer over Boris Diaw early in the second half on Tuesday, Paul Pierce scored the 21,792nd point of his career. All of them have, of course, come as a Celtic, which now puts him second all-time on the franchise scoring list, just ahead of Larry Bird. It's an outstanding accomplishment for a player I've come to admire more and more as his career has worn on.

Three things about the all-time Celtics scoring list:

1)John Havlicek is really far ahead of Pierce. Even if Pierce keeps up his current scoring pace, he's still like three-plus healthy seasons away from catching Hondo. I really wish I was alive to see that guy play.

2)Pierce's health has been a big boost to his career numbers. Pierce is currently in his 14th NBA season; Bird played 13. Larry Legend, however, missed almost all of the 1988-89 season with a torn Achilles, and about 60 games combined over his last two seasons with injuries before retiring because of his back. Pierce, in contrast, missed about half off the "tank-for-Oden-or-Durant" season, and his rookie year was the last strike-shortened season. Other than that, he's never missed more than a handful of games in a season. He's averaged about two points per game less than Bird did over his career.

3)Fourth- and fifth-place on the list are Robert Parish and Kevin McHale, respectively. They're well behind Pierce and Bird, but it's still pretty remarkable, to me, that three of the top five scorers in the history of one of the league's oldest franchises (and it's most storied) had such overlap during their careers. Bird played from 79-80 to 91-92; McHale from 80-81 to 92-93; and the Chief was a Celtic from 80-81 to 92-93, bookending his career with four years in Golden State on the front end and three with Chicago on the back end. What a team that was.