Celtics captain Paul Pierce is confident in his team's standing heading into the 2010-11 season.
"I think we're there at the top," he said. "I think we're one of the top four or five teams in all of basketball.
"We can use another wing man off the bench after losing Tony Allen (to Memphis in free agency). But, for the most part, I love our team. I think we're better now than we were in June."
Pierce said Tuesday that he lobbied Celtics president Danny Ainge to sign center Shaquille O'Neal.
"I pushed," he said. "You looked around and you looked at the free agents. I saw Shaq was the best available at the time."
Pierce doesn't buy into the notion that the O'Neal signing is simply adding another over-the-hill player to an already aging roster.
"When you put him in our group of guys, he's going to have a different role now," Pierce said. "The role he had in Cleveland, he had to be the second guy or the third guy at times. With us, it's not going to have to be that way. We have a number of guys we can play through. There's not a lot of pressure for Shaq to go out and get the 15 or 20 (points) a night like he had to in Cleveland for them to be successful.
"He's going to have great nights playing along with me, Kevin (Garnett), Ray and (Rajon) Rondo because we're all unselfish. If he puts together the season he had with Cleveland for us, we'll probably be the best team in the league. I think he fits the system we play a lot better than he did in Cleveland."
