NBA

Pierce: Nets match up with anybody in the league

DALLAS — The Nets are as hot as any team in the Eastern Conference — winners of three in a row, 10 of their last 12 and having climbed to within 1 ¹/₂ games of the Raptors for first place in the Atlantic Division and a game of the Bulls for fourth place in the conference.

So it comes as no surprise after beating the Celtics, 114-98, Friday night at Barclays Center — the Nets’ 11th straight home victory, which improved them to 17-2 at home since the start of 2014 — Paul Pierce declared his team is confident against any team in the East.

“Nobody is talking about us, but we feel like we match up with anybody in the league, especially in the Eastern Conference,” Pierce said after scoring 14 points in 19 minutes against his former team. “Let the chips fall where they may.

“Come playoff time, we feel we can compete with the best of them, and we feel like we can be one of the better teams in the East, if not come out of the East, and we’ll be able to surprise a couple of teams.”

The idea of the Nets — who begin a three-game road trip in Dallas on Sunday night — surprising anyone in the playoffs would have been laughable as recently as Jan. 1, when they were 10-21, having lost four of their last five games after finding out they had lost Brook Lopez for the season with a fractured fifth metatarsal in his right foot.

But after switching to a smallball lineup, the script has flipped. They’ve now gone 26-10 since Jan. 1 — the best record in the East and fourth-best in the NBA — including head-turning triumphs over the Heat (twice), Thunder, Warriors, Bulls, Raptors and Grizzlies.

“I’m not worried about it,” Nets general manager Billy King said of whether he felt differently about his team’s chances now. “I want to play our best basketball going into the postseason and worry about that then. Miami is still the defending champs. You still have to beat them.”

It is still a bit hard to imagine the Nets have put themselves in a position to make a postseason run — and could even finish with the third seed and an Atlantic Division title in the process. But Pierce said even in the team’s darkest days back in November and December, the Nets never doubted their ability.

“I think this is a team that always believed it,” Pierce said. “We wouldn’t have turned this thing around if we didn’t believe that. The good thing about this locker room is when we were struggling, the leaders in here, we always said, ‘We’re going to turn this thing around.’

“We stayed positive. There was no finger pointing, there was no, ‘We need to change this, we need to do this.’ We just needed to play a little harder, and sometimes chemistry takes a little bit longer to get than some other teams.

“It was a unique situation we had in 2008 [in Boston] when we brought this together. This is a little different now, so it took a bit longer. Now you’re seeing the chemistry come around, and it’s beautiful.”