DURHAM, N.C. — Midway through the 2001-02 season, Celtics general manager Chris Wallace saw an opportunity.
The once-proud franchise, which was still recovering from the disastrous Rick Pitino, was on its way to its first playoff appearance since 1995 behind strong play from Paul Pierce and Antoine Walker when a trade possibility materialized with the Suns. So Wallace, sensing a chance for the Celtics to make a playoff run, pounced, sending Randy Brown, Milt Palacio, a 2002 first-round pick and a rookie named Joe Johnson to Phoenix for veterans Rodney Rogers and Tony Delk.
While Rogers and Delk played significant roles off the bench as Boston advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals — where they lost, ironically, in six games to the Jason Kidd-led Nets — the Celtics paid a significant price down the road, as Rogers signed as a free agent with the Nets that summer, Delk left the year after that and Johnson blossomed into one of the NBA's elite shooting guards with Phoenix and then Atlanta.
"I just remember seeing a kid who had a huge upside, who I said was going to be an All-Star one day, who was going to be one of the best players in the league one day," Pierce said after Thursday's practice, now finally reunited with his former teammate 11 years later on the Nets. "We just didn't give him a chance to develop in Boston.
"I thought we could've been a great tandem in our younger years. You can imagine, if we'd had me and Joe on the wings for 10 years. … Who knows what would have happened. But we're here now, and we're still trying to see what's going to happen."
You could hear a bit of wistfulness in Pierce's voice, and understandably so. While Johnson developed into a six-time All-Star, Pierce spent several years trying to carry a mediocre supporting cast, with limited success, before the arrival of Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett prior to Boston's championship-winning 2007-08 season.
"Well, this go around is obviously a lot different, from me being a rookie and not knowing nothing, you know what I mean?" Johnson said. "Now, being a 13-year vet, we are two guys that are very seasoned and very experienced. He can only make my job easier, and vice-versa.
"I'm really looking forward to it. I think it's going to be a lot of fun."
There have been plenty of questions about how Johnson and Pierce — both of whom are high-usage wing players who are accustomed to being focal points of the offense — are going to co-exist within the Nets' offense, especially once you factor in the presence of other potential scoring options such as Deron Williams and Brook Lopez.
But when you hear both players talk about it, they seem to have the same mindset — that the presence of one another on opposite sides of the court is only going to make it more difficult for opposing defenses to stop both of them.
"Joe is a phenomenal player," Pierce said. "He does so many great things. He's going to take so much pressure off of me on both ends of the court.
"He's one of the best clutch players obviously in this league, and I'm going to enjoy being on the opposite side of him, taking pressure off of him as well."
Both players have thought about what could have been if their partnership in Boston had been given a chance to flourish, but Johnson said he's anxious to see how things go now that they're back together again.
"I've thought about it, but I'm the type of guy that believes everything happens for a reason," Johnson said. "I was able to kind of move on and kind of grow into my own, so to speak. Now we're back together again, so hopefully we can make magic happen this go-around."
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