Pierce is unruffled by Cleveland's romp

As several Boston coaches and players watched the Masters in an adjacent room after the game, Pierce was asked about the Cavaliers' celebrating. He reacted to his teammates' vocal accompaniment to the golf tournament by smiling, then replied:

"I mean, it was good to win and that's what they did. Hopefully, we'll get a chance to see them again in the playoffs. But I don't have nothing to say about that, they're enjoying it, they're having a good time."

Cleveland took a 31-9 first quarter lead, the Celtics' lowest quarter total since scoring 8 points in the final quarter against Indiana (102-71 loss) Nov. 22, 1993, in Hartford. The Celtics' first-quarter low is 7 points against Milwaukee (91-83 win) Nov. 12, 1974.

"That's pretty discouraging, you go out there and have a start like that, especially in a building like this," Pierce said. "But, I don't think this loss really did anything to shake our confidence. Because we feel like we can come in here and win a ballgame when we have to, so, hopefully, if we meet in the conference final, we're confident we can get the job done in this building."

Guard Ray Allen said: "I'm not going to make any excuses for us. I just think you play and you deal with what's going on. We weren't competitive and I think in the second quarter we kind of picked it up. We missed shots and they made shots and they were the aggressor. We really wanted to win. It was like we were too cool to start the game off."

Asked about possible complacency, Pierce said: "I don't think that was really our mindset. Whenever you go out there, you want to play well and you want to play to win. They played well at both ends of the court and we didn't.

"It was just one of those games we have probably once a year and we have to throw it in the burner and move on. This is where [the Cavaliers] play well. We've got to come out from the start of games and have better focus and better energy.

"I can't speak for anybody, but I just try to go out and play as best I can, as hard as I can, each game. We have a job to do and that's our job."

"As a team, we said, 'Hey, let's go out there and beat this team,' " Allen said. "I know me, personally, and everybody agreed on trying to get this win."

Asked about James, Allen said, "Amazing shots, amazing shots. He's LeBron James. Unfortunately, shots didn't fall the way I wanted them to fall, but I liked some things out of this game, some things I did. And some things I didn't like."

"We'll see [today]," Rivers said. "We're going to have some sort of practice. We don't know how many guys we'll have for it. We'll see, and make a decision from that point.

"Like I told Kevin, if we don't think you're really ready for the game, go home and get treatment - you and everybody who can't go. And, if Leon [Powe] can go, we'll keep him, and if he can't, he'll go home, too - because there's really no reason to stay around."

Before the game, Rivers indicated the Celtics' surprise at having clinched the No. 2 Eastern Conference seed Saturday night when the Magic lost.

"It's really an important game for [the Cavaliers], so it would be great to be a spoiler," he said. "Having said that, we're hoping that they would never need that home court [advantage] in the Finals, because that would mean we wouldn't be there. We're playing, we're here, so we might as well go ahead and play the game. We haven't had a whole lot of time to talk about it. We weren't prepared for this game to be a game that we didn't have to do anything."

Said Pierce. "You didn't really expect Orlando to lose to New Jersey and they just lost to New York at home. You really didn't expect that. Hey, we got it [second seed]. It doesn't change anything in what we're trying to do. We still want to win these games and play well going into the playoffs."

Frank Dell'Apa can be reached at f_dellapa@globe.com.