"You can write the obituary. I'm not." 

-- Doc Rivers

OK, we will.

Look, we shouldn't expect Doc Rivers to be anything but publicly resolute when asked about the chances of the 2012-13 Celtics. What's he supposed to say? "Yeah, we're 21-23, our best player is gone for the season, our two best healthy players are a combined 71 years old and I really can't depend on anyone else on this roster for anything resembling a nightly contribution?" 

Of course not. And if we've learned anything about this coach over the last five-plus years, it's this: Doc Rivers can motivate players and get them to believe in a team-first mentality, no small feat in any era, forget this one.  

So let's concede that Rivers isn't giving up on the season. It could even be, quietly, that as a coach he is even looking forward to the challenge of trying to win without the services of Rajon Rondo. 

It is the job of Doc Rivers to stay engaged in this effort of trying to win for the next 38 regular-season games, to forget about Rajon Rondo and move on, to use Sunday's terrifically entertaining win over the Heat as evidence that this can still be done.

That's not the reality of the situation, though. The 2012-13 Boston Celtics, maddeningly mediocre all season long, were not a championship contender before Rondo tore his ACL in what already was the worst loss of the season on Friday in Atlanta. Now they truly are just another team, fully capable of both beating and losing to any team in the NBA on any night. All the problems we have seen over the first 44 games -- inability to score, inability to rebound, inconsistent efforts from Jason Terry and Jeff Green and Brandon Bass and, most troubling, a defense that allows the opponent comfort, something that simply didn't exist during the peak of success for the group -- aren't going to depart with Rondo. This is a team that is going to fight for an eighth seed in the Eastern Conference, for the right to again lose to LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Ray Allen in the playoffs.

And I have zero doubt, if kept together, these Celtics will fight and scrap for that spot in the postseason and put a scare or three into the Heat before bowing out. We know enough about Doc Rivers, Kevin Garnett and Paul Pierce to arrive at that conclusion. 

But that's not the goal, is it? Pesky, admirable early exits in the playoffs were not what we were sold when Garnett re-signed in the offseason and when Jason Terry and Courtney Lee were added. This was a team, remember, that had a lead in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals last June. This was going to be, at worst, the second-best team in the conference again in 2012-13, maybe a better team than the one that walked off the floor in Miami at the end of Game 7.

That didn't happen, as we know. But before Rondo was injured, there was still a belief Out There that the corner was within shouting distance, the team we were sold on might still surface.

Now that's gone, and as Rivers surely will earn his money over the next couple of months doing his job, it's time for Danny Ainge to earn his.

It's time to look toward the future. For the first time since the Garnett trade, next year means more than this year, and two years from now might mean even more. Put it another way: If Ainge is presented with a deal for Pierce that he believes might hurt the Celtics short-term but potentially help them long-term he has to make that trade.

This is a good time to have something closer to a manic interventionist than a serial sentimentalist in charge of your franchise. We've all heard the stories of Ainge telling Red Auerbach to trade Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish while they still had value. You could argue that Ainge ignored his own advice by inking Garnett to a three-year deal at age 36 and offering Ray Allen more money than the Heat, I suppose, and it's not an unfair accusation. 

So Pierce is a test, but a test with some legitimate value. Sure, he's clearly not the Paul Pierce of even two, three years ago, but he's still a player with cache, a scorer not exactly lacking in postseason experience. There's also this: Just $4 million of his $15.3 million is guaranteed for next season. 

Again, this isn't about trading Pierce just to trade him. If Ainge can't get what he wants in return, you just keep Pierce for now and explore options at the end of the season. But if there is a player that Ainge covets on a team that views Pierce as a missing piece to a title -- Rudy Gay straight up for Pierce could actually be done, and making trades in the NBA is a terribly difficult process -- it would be a disservice to the Celtics and a failure on his part to not try to ship Pierce out of Boston.

Would a Pierce trade suggest that the Celtics are giving up, that the title hopes are gone? Yup, which is OK because the title hopes are gone. Would such a deal anger Kevin Garnett? I'm sure it would, but that's life late in the third act of an NBA career. The long-term future of the Celtics is more important than Kevin Garnett's happiness for the next 24 months. 

Paul Pierce is one of the seven or eight greatest players in the history of the Celtics, which is a hell of a statement, really. And he's been loyal and played through injury and with some truly putrid talent around him for a great deal of his prime, which was a shame. But that doesn't mean he's earned the right to never be traded, at the end this is a business, a business that has allowed Pierce to earn $152 million to play basketball for the Boston Celtics. 

And now the best move for the business of the Boston Celtics is to aggressively and ruthlessly look to trade Pierce while he still can bring something worthwhile in return. 

That's the truth.