Paul Pierce stokes Nets-Knicks rivalry fires, Deron Williams takes the high road

From the scene on the red carpet at Basketball City during DODGE BARRAGE, Deron Williams’s celebrity dodgeball tournament promoting the Point of Hope Foundation:

Knicks forward J.R. Smith had said that Paul Pierce was “bitter” about the Knicks.

The Nets and Knicks have a rivalry. There’s no getting around that. You can mock it because sports rivalries are inherently kind of silly, you can downplay it because the teams haven’t played in the same city for more than one season, you can argue the teams haven’t been good long enough to constitute a “real” rivalry, or you could argue that turf wars end in bloodshed. You can do all of that. But there is a rivalry here, beacuse the teams want there to be a rivalry. That’s all you really need.

I mean, even if Deron Williams won’t say it to the media, he will say it to 574,000 followers: