Just a few days ago an Eastern Conference scout told Marc Stein that without Rondo, Miami would win a Celtics-Heat series in five. Well Paul Pierce doesn’t care about the scout at all; in an interview with David Aldridge, Pierce said that not only does he want to play Miami, but he feels the Celtics have shown they can beat the NBA’s best:

Me: When you won in ’08 KG famously said ‘anything is possible!‘ Are you carrying that to this year, especially with all the injuries?

PP: We know we’re going to be a tough out, regardless. I think we’re going to be that team that nobody wants to play in the playoffs. Right now we’re so unpredictable. You don’t know what we’re capable (of). You look up and we play teams, sometimes we lose to bad teams, and then we beat the better teams. We don’t know which Boston team is going to show up, and at any given moment we can get hot and beat the best of the best in the NBA. We’ve shown that we can beat Miami; we’ve shown that we can beat Oklahoma City; we’ve shown we can beat New York. You’re talking about some of the best teams in the NBA. We’re just going to continue to fly under the radar and see what happens.

Me: You want Miami again, don’t you?

PP: I always thrive on wanting to play against the best. Right now, Miami’s the best. It would be nice to see them in the playoffs. Winning’s not easy. In order to win, you’ve got to see the best. And I think it would be fun for the NBA.

You can check out the whole interview here ,or poke around the rest of The Morning Tip for all sorts of NBA goodness including some quotes from Avery Bradley and Doc Rivers about the young guard’s defensive mindset and emerging offense. Realistically, a lot (like LeBron-James-getting-abducted-by-aliens a lot) would have to fall the Boston’s way for them to beat Miami in a seven game series, but in a season where it’d be easy to throw in the towel, Pierce and the Celtics are determined to go down swinging.

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