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Traina Thoughts: Paul Pierce Still Feeling the Heat Over Dumb D-Wade Comments

Paul Pierce gets lit up by NBA fans everywhere after saying he was better than Dwyane Wade.

Jimmy Traina

Boston Globe

1. Paul Pierce threw out his ridiculous take that he had a better career than Dwyane Wade almost a week ago, but the trolling keeps rolling on.

Wednesday night, during Wade's final regular season game, the crowd started chanting, "PAUL PIERCE SUCKS!" The game, though, was not in Miami. It was in Brooklyn! Even a neutral crowd is giving Pierce the business. 

And then someone went and made this graphic.

Meanwhile, Twitter is still having a field day going after Pierce.

From a media standpoint, it will be interesting to see if ESPN can get any juice out of Pierce's heel turn. The network's NBA studio show never gets any love or publicity, which partly has to do with not even being able to compare to TNT's NBA studio show. But Pierce is definitely a topic right now, so maybe ESPN tells him to keep saying wild stuff that makes no sense just to get some attention. That strategy works for the network's daytime shows.

2. I honestly don't want to spend the entire season talking about how out of touch MLB is when it comes to social media. (This was a big topic with MLB Network's Lauren Shehadi and Robert Flores on this week's SI Media Podcast.)

However, the league and the Angels need to be called out today. Anaheim reliver Hansel Robles came out Wednesday night to The Undertaker's theme song, complete with scary video accompaniment. Did MLB post this video on its Twitter or Instagram feeds? No. Did the Angels post this on their Twitter or Instagram feeds? No. Just mind-boggling short-sightedness.

Anyway, here's a fan video of Robles entering the game while The Undertaker's scary music blares in the background.

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3. This is just so, so sad. After the video of him saying in February that Virignia would never win a national title spread all over the Internet after the Cavaliers win Monday, Mike Francesa now claims the footage was doctored.

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Here is the video Francesa claims was edited.

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4. Excellent work here by Bleacher Report.

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5. Bill Walton joined longtime Clippers play-by-play man Ralph Lawler in the booth Wednesday night to call L.A.'s game against the Jazz. It was Lawler's last game ever after calling Clippers games for 40 years. He worked with Walton from 1990-2003. To no surprise, Walton was up to his usual form.

6. A lot of my Twitter followers got a big kick out of this Wednesday, so I wanted to make sure the Traina Thoughts audience also got to take the trip down memory lane.

7. RANDOM YOUTUBE VIDEO OF THE DAY: It's pretty wild that this commercial—which would not get made today—is more than 20 years old.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on iTunes, Spotify or Google Play. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.

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IN CLOSING: After seeing the hype around Dwyane Wade's retirement, I can't imagine what's going to happen when LeBron calls it a career.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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