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Paul Pierce thinks there’s only one team that can threaten Celtics in Eastern Conference
"That's the only team that I be like, ‘Damn, I really am scared of.’”
The Boston Celtics might sit atop the NBA standings with a 45-12 record this season, but Joe Mazzulla’s squad will have to trudge through a gauntlet of Eastern Conference foes if it wants to make it back to the NBA Finals.
But if you ask Celtics legend Paul Pierce, there’s only one team in the East that stands as a viable threat to Boston during the postseason.
Speaking with former pro basketball player Jason Crowe on his new “The Truth Lounge” show, Pierce discussed the current contenders in the Eastern Conference and how they stack up next to Boston.
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“This is what I like about the NBA this year. I think we’re gonna just turn it on and watch,” Crowe noted.
“Who can beat them in the East four times? Who can beat a healthy Celtics team in the East four times? … They own Philly,” Pierce said of the Celtics. “I don’t want to hear that. They’ve owned Philly over the years, bro.
“I don’t want to hear that. … You only got one legit team — Miami — because they, even though they are where they’re at [in the standings], that’s the only team that I be like, ‘Damn, I really am scared of.’”
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“They get tough during the playoffs,” Crowe said of Miami. “They get themselves together.”
Assessing the rest of the East, the case can be made that some of the top threats to the Celtics have been hampered.
The 76ers will be without their top player in Joel Embiid for an undetermined time while recovering from knee surgery, while the Bucks are 5-7 since Doc Rivers took over as head coach.
Miami currently sits in seventh place in the East with a 31-25 record, but regular-season totals have done little to tell the whole story about a stingy Heat squad — especially once the calendar flips to the playoffs.
After Boston outlasted Miami in a seven-game slugfest in the 2022 Eastern Conference Finals, the eighth-seeded Heat snuffed out the Celtics in the 2023 Eastern Conference Finals — winning the deciding Game 7 at TD Garden.
The Celtics have taken care of business against the Heat so far during the 2023-24 regular season, going 3-0 and averaging 124 points per game. Still, any team coached by Erik Spoelstra and led by Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, and Tyler Herro figures to be a tough out during the postseason.
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