Wizards Expect Pierce to Lead Way

After spending the first 15 seasons of his N.B.A. career with the Boston Celtics, Paul Pierce has found himself as a hired gun in the league, a sort of big-money consultant brought in to impart championship wisdom to some less-enlightened group.

Last season he swaggered into Brooklyn after a trade to the Nets and began touting the team's trophy ambitions with the type of reckless charisma the organization desperately lacked at the time.

This week it was a familiar script with a new team. 'When I look at the Eastern Conference, we can be right up there with the rest of the them,' Pierce said of the Washington Wizards, who signed him to a two-year, $10.8 million contract over the summer, after the Nets declined to bring him back. 'I think we match up well with pretty much anybody in the East - and not only the East, the entire N.B.A.'

Randy Wittman, the Wizards coach, pointed out that Pierce, 37, a potential Hall of Famer, is the only one in his locker room with a championship ring. The Wizards are young, talented and seeking self-belief. Pierce is confidence personified.

Three minutes into an interview with a few reporters Wednesday morning at Madison Square Garden, where the Knicks later beat the Wizards in a preseason game, Pierce decided that he was done answering questions, got up from his chair, put on his sunglasses, and walked away. His teammates were happy to speak on his behalf.

'I love his fighting spirit,' center Marcin Gortat said of Pierce. 'We still need to keep building chemistry, but hopefully he's the guy that can bring us to the finals.'

That a Wizards player can mention the N.B.A. finals as a season goal, that he can do so and not be dismissed as delusional, is a testament to how the club thinks of itself after improvements in the past year or so.

After a 29-53 record in the 2012-2013 season, the Wizards won 44 games last season and took the Indiana Pacers to six games before exiting the second round of the playoffs. Much of the turnaround was attributed to the continued emergence of point guard John Wall, 24, who missed a chunk of the 29-win season with a knee injury. Last season, his fourth in the league, he averaged 19.3 points and 8.8 assists a game and was named to his first All-Star team.

The Wizards, then, no longer have the benefit of their opponents' disregard. In the league's annual preseason survey of teams' general managers, more than half of the ones polled picked Washington to win the Southeast division. The Cleveland Cavaliers, retooled around LeBron James, and the Chicago Bulls, revitalized with a healthy Derrick Rose, are the obvious favorites in the East, but the Wizards have become the popular third choice.

'We're not going to be the surprise team of the conference anymore because of last year,' said Gortat, who averaged 13.2 points, 9.5 rebounds and 1.5 blocks per game last season, his first with the Wizards.

The Wizards' confidence this week was tinged with caution, with several players bringing up the group's current glut of injuries as an early hurdle to overcome.

The team is most concerned about Bradley Beal, a talented 21-year-old shooting guard who fractured his left wrist in a preseason game this month and could be sidelined until December. Beal averaged 17.1 points per game last season, his second in the league, and settled in during the playoffs alongside Wall to form one of the more sparkling backcourt partnerships in the league.

On top of the injuries, four players, including Nene and DeJuan Blair, will serve one-game suspensions to start the season for leaving the bench in a preseason game altercation.

'We know that we got off to a slow start last year, and we can't do that again,' Wall said. 'So we're already focused and locked in and trying to hold the fort down until those other guys come back.'

Pierce, who averaged 13.5 points in 28.0 minutes per game last season with the Nets, will be central to that effort.

It was the sudden exit of small forward Trevor Ariza that precipitated Pierce's move to Washington. Pierce, at this late stage of his career, falls short of the multifaceted skill set Ariza provided. But Wittman noted that the team has not had a small forward like Pierce, who can score in so many ways, since he joined the Wizards' coaching staff as an assistant in 2009.

On top of his scoring prowess, his teammates said, Pierce brings leadership and, perhaps more important, a strutting sense of possibility. With young and talented players in place and high goals within reach, that could be just what the Wizards need.

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