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Former NBA star Paul Pierce has advice to Conor McGregor.
Former NBA champ and ten-time all-star, Paul Pierce is in Australia, where he met MMA personalities like Israel Adesanya ahead of UFC 243. The 2008 NBA Finals MVP spoke about various topics in mixed martial arts, including Conor McGregor’s recent issues outside the cage.
The 41-year-old basketball legend said McGregor will have to change a lot of things if he wants to regain his spot in the sport.
“The thing about being on top is that you have so many people pulling on you. You got so many eyes watching you,” Pierce told Submission Radio. “So the person you were years before, before you became the megastar, you have to adapt to being a superstar, understand that people are going to try and pull you down. So, you have to be smart, be smart in what you do, how you say, how you act in the public eye. Because now you’re looked upon as a champion, as a person who rose to the top while other people are trying to pull you down. So, you have to change your ways, in so many ways, if you want to stay on top.
“Now if you don’t do that, as we saw, he fell from the top of the mountain. Can he get back there? Absolutely. But he’s going to have to change some things.”
Pierce also brought up how NBA star Kobe Bryant managed to repair his image after being arrested for sexual assault (and settling his case) in 2003.
“I don’t know if there’s one piece of advice, but I think that you learn from your experiences,” Pierce said. “Some people, they get to the top of the mountain and then they get pulled down and they have to grow. We saw that with Kobe Bryant. He did his trial and the things he went through, and then he went back to the mountain top. So you learn, you move on, you mature and you grow from it.”
Early this year, the New York Times reported that McGregor was arrested and is under investigation for sexual assault. Dublin’s privacy laws are pretty strict for cases like these, and there hasn’t been much updates since then. For what it’s worth, Dana White recently said that McGregor told him “it’s not him.”