Fans in Boston have always had a reason to celebrate. After all, as long as the NBA has been around, the Celtics have been its premier team. There haven’t been many fallow periods in Boston’s history. Though some predicted there would be a slump when Jayson Tatum went down with a torn Achilles in last year’s playoffs, Jaylen Brown and company have kept right on trucking.
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The Celtics are currently second in the East with a 43-21 record. And two games ago, they got Tatum back, less than 10 months after he tore his Achilles. Boston has won both games since his return by double digits. While beating the tanking Dallas Mavericks by 20 isn’t especially noteworthy, winning by 11 at Cleveland is.
Tatum has scored 35 points in total while playing 27 minutes in each game, and has also shown an ability to find his teammates, rebound, and get to the free-throw line. Legendary Celtic Paul Pierce has always been in the bag for his former team, but seeing how Tatum has looked has taken his pro-Celtics excitement to another level.
Pierce told Danny Green and Wosny Lambre in the newest episode of No Fouls Given that he’s now putting his money where his mouth is. “Man, y’all lucky I ain’t got nothing else in my cup,” he crowed when Lambre mentioned the Celtics. He then admitted to texting his cohosts about how he’s been betting “hundreds of thousands of dollars” on the Celtics to come out of the East.
“Yeah, I have been saying that,” said Pierce. “But I said when I came in here, I said, ‘Who do y’all have faith in in the East, if you were a betting man?'”
Pierce apparently is a betting man. And his faith in the Celtics, combined with his lack of faith in the other top Eastern Conference teams, has made him confident enough to bet a portion of his over $203 million career earnings on Boston.
“I mean, yeah, Detroit has the best record, but they’re playing their worst basketball at the current time,” continued Pierce. “Yeah, we saw what happened to Cleveland with the Celtics in Jayson Tatum’s second game. The Celtics are in second place in the East without Tatum. We just turned into one of the deepest teams in the league with Tatum coming back.”
Pierce’s use of “we” when referring to the Celtics is telling: He is and always will be a Celtic. Also, he believes that this team is going places. He’s not saving a seat for any non-believers, though.
When Green intimated that he was dropping the New York Knicks, his longtime pick to come out of the East, in favor of the Celtics or Pistons, Pierce cut him off.
“Naw naw naw naw naw don’t come over here right now. We [have] got enough on our plate. We [have] got enough on our bandwagon. Don’t come on our bandwagon right now,” said Pierce.
“When I texted y’all about four days ago, when I said I’m putting $100,000 on the Celtics, I know that y’all was laughing,” he said. “Y’all laughed in the group text,” he added.
Pierce’s bets haven’t always worked out for him, but maybe this one will be different. A lot can change in the next few months, after all.
However, right now the Celtics’ arrow is pointing up, while most of the other contenders in the East aren’t looking so hot. We’ll see if he can come out on the winning side of this one.
