Iman Shumpert had a vendetta against Paul Pierce after the Celtics star refused to give him a high five as a kid

• Iman Shumpert held a grudge against Paul Pierce before he even joined the NBA.
• Shumpert's aunt once brought him to sit courtside at a Celtics-Bulls game, and Pierce refused to give him a halftime high-five.
• "When I get [to the NBA], I got something for you," Shumpert recalled thinking in an interview with Uninterrupted.

Iman Shumpert wasn't even in the league yet when his first NBA rivalry began to take form.

The 6-foot-5 guard - who played for five different teams over his 10-year NBA career - joined the New York Knicks as their first-round draft pick in 2011. However, long before then, he had developed a distaste for Boston Celtics legend Paul Pierce.

In an interview with Uninterrupted, Shumpert recalled sitting courtside at a Bulls-Celtics game with his aunt when he was just a kid. He remembered "having tears in my eyes" because he was so excited to be seated so close to the action at an NBA game. When halftime came, Shumpert was eager to high-five some of the stars as they headed back to the locker room, but Pierce was having none of it.

"Paul Pierce comes by. He ain't dap me," Shumpert said, shaking his head. "And he sort of like, looked at me wrong. Like he just looked at me mean."

"And my first impression of Paul Pierce was all like 'When I get here, I got something for you,'" he added. "'Like, for you, specifically.'"

Shumpert made good on his promise. He spent years battling "The Truth" in the Eastern Conference, most famously when Shumpert played for the Knicks and Pierce played in Boston. But once, after Pierce took his talents to the Brooklyn Nets in the twilight of his career, Shumpert broke the 2021 Hall of Fame nominee's ankles with a vicious crossover that sent him to the floor.

To nobody's surprise, Shumpert clearly hasn't forgotten that moment of revenge some seven years later.

"If you fast forward, I did make him fall before," Shumpert told Uninterrupted, smiling. "Auntie, I lived up to that."

Check out the full Uninterrupted clip below:

—UNINTERRUPTED (@uninterrupted) December 27, 2020

• Read more:
• Kyrie Irving tried to rid his former team's arena of negative energy by burning sage before game against Celtics
• College basketball star who collapsed during a game and was put into a coma has heart condition associated with COVID-19
• Fran Belibi only needed 2 steps from the free-throw line for her dunk on UCLA and help keep No. 1 Stanford undefeated
• The new NBA 'City Edition' jerseys for all 30 teams