OAKLAND – About an hour before tip-off Paul Pierce came bouncing through the locker room. “I’m still around,” Pierce said to the press with a grin. “I’m still around.”

No, Pierce hasn’t been traded. Nor has anyone else and as the hours tick down to the trade deadline on Thursday, there’s a good chance that most, if not all, of the 2012 Celtics will still be around when they bus to Sacramento to play the Kings on Friday.

Clearly, the Celtics need another big man. That became obvious when news broke earlier in the day that forward Chris Wilcox will have aortic surgery on March 29 and will miss the rest of the season. It’s a devastating blow for the team, and for Wilcox, who after 10 years in the league was finally about to break through and compete on a playoff team. But as with Jeff Green, everyone is thankful that his condition was caught in time.

“It’s obviously tough,” Doc Rivers said. “Tough for Chris. In the long run again as Lawrence Frank sarcastically wrote, ‘You guys are in the business of saving lives.’ In retrospect that’s true. I’d rather have it that way. Obviously basketball wise, that puts us in a bit of a hole. We have until tomorrow to see if we can extract a big from somewhere, but we don’t want to give up anything so that’s going to be tough to do.”

Rivers keeps telling Danny Ainge not to do anything to jeopardize the future, which Ainge isn’t inclined to do anyway. But the coach is also saying something else. He isn’t ready to let go of the present.

“At the end of the day I like our team, obviously we need a big, but let’s not do anything that hurts the team this year or the future to try and get a big,” Rivers said. “I just don’t think we should do that.”

After holding off the Warriors, 105-103, they have now won eight of their last 10 games since the All-Star break and are within a half game of catching Atlanta for sixth place in the Eastern Conference. They truly believe that if they can get to the end of the season in one piece that they can be a dangerous team in the playoffs.

“A lot of things are going on,” Rivers said. “Number one, our team is really close right now. You can feel the spirit. They knew they were struggling. Early [in the year] they would have been upset with each other. You could see one guy mess up and play and everyone had resolve. They just got over it instead of getting on guys.”

The Celtics didn’t play their best against Golden State, a team that just pulled off a big deal of their own, trading Monta Ellis, Kwame Brown and promising big man Ekpe Udoh for injured center Andrew Bogut and veteran Stephen Jackson. Star guard Steph Curry didn’t play and from the sound of things at Oracle Arena, Curry isn’t likely to play anytime soon. The Warriors have a vested interest in not winning games right now as their first round pick is protected if they fall in the top seven.

Still, they gave the Celtics everything they could handle, and the Celtics responded with a porous defensive effort and several head-scratching turnovers. They almost gave it away late when Pierce broke a possession and was forced to fire up a contested jump shot. But Pierce accepted blame and when Rivers gave him another chance, he found Kevin Garnett for a game-winning 20-foot jump shot.

“He was the criminal in that one, but he came in and said, ‘Hey, my fault guys.’ That’s basically why I gave him the ball back at the end,” Rivers said. “Usually when you make a mistake you want to do something good and he did. That was a heck of a pass he gave to Kevin.”

Garnett called it the “Madison Square Garden play,” as in the walk-off. He made 11 of 15 shots and for the second night in a row, he took and made the biggest shot of the game. Like Rivers, he feels things are starting to come together.

“I will concur to that,” Garnett said. “This year has been a rollercoaster. Filled with all types of episodes in it. But through all that we’ve banded together and put some wins together and played some decent basketball.”

This has been a different experience for Pierce, Garnett, Ray Allen and Rajon Rondo. They’re not only the most important players, they’re the only remaining links to the 2008 title team and the 2010 team that made an unexpected run to the finals. Those four are used to doing things a certain way, and having everyone else fall in line and that’s been an adjustment for the other rotation players as well.

“We had a bunch of new guys, especially myself,” Brandon Bass said. “Everybody was on me about this, about that. I’m finally getting it. I knew it was going to take some time. I guess all the guys knew it was going to take some time as well.”

Bass has grown into a starting role. Greg Stiemsma has emerged as a capable backup center and Avery Bradley has become a dependable reserve. They still have no depth, and that still needs to be addressed either at the deadline or after when players are bought out of their contracts. But as of Wednesday night into Thursday morning, Pierce was still around and so was everyone else.