Alright, so I got this itch today, needed to check out Ricky Pierce’s stats. Remember him? Smooth shooter, instant offense off the bench back in the day. Just popped into my head.
So, I went over to my computer, opened up a browser. Typed “Ricky Pierce stats” into the search thing. You know how it goes. Hit enter.
Bunch of results came up, mostly the big sports statistics sites. I clicked on one of the usual suspects, the one I typically use for basketball numbers. Had to scroll past some ads, typical stuff.
Found his main page. Okay, here we go. Started looking through the numbers year by year. Checking out his points per game, field goal percentage, free throw percentage – guy was automatic from the line, pretty much.
Key Things I Noticed
- Those two Sixth Man of the Year awards, back-to-back with the Bucks. Definitely remember that.
- His scoring average jumped around a bit depending on his role, but when he got minutes, he scored.
- Played for quite a few teams later in his career – Sonics, Warriors, Pacers, Nuggets, Hornets… bounced around a bit.
- Solid career averages, especially considering he was often coming off the bench.
Looking at those clean stats, all lined up nice and neat… it got me thinking about something else entirely. Totally unrelated, maybe?
It reminded me of this time, ages ago, at this small company I worked for. We were trying to figure out our project completion rates over the last, say, three years. Sounds simple, right? Just look up the data.
What a joke. Nobody had kept consistent records. One manager used a spreadsheet he made himself, saved on his local drive. Another team used some ancient project management software nobody had the password for anymore. And the sales guys? They just kinda… remembered stuff, or had notes scribbled on printouts.
I spent like, a whole week trying to stitch this information together. Calling people, digging through old emails, trying to make sense of conflicting numbers. It was a complete mess. We needed one simple percentage, and it was like pulling teeth just to get a number we felt halfway okay about reporting upstairs. Even then, I wasn’t sure it was truly accurate.
So, seeing Ricky Pierce’s career points, games played, all that… perfectly logged and easy to find after decades? Kinda makes you appreciate simple, well-kept data. Unlike the chaos I dealt with back then. Anyway, Pierce was a good player. Definitely knew how to get buckets.
