Paul Pierce makes bold claim about Damian Lillard, Heat

NBA Hall of Famer Paul Pierce is one of the top players in NBA history. Pierce was an NBA champion with the Boston Celtics and was recently honored as a member of the NBA's 75th anniversary team.

Since retirement, Pierce has been involved in NBA analysis and has had a significant number of eye-popping hot takes over the last few years. His latest hot take came in an appearance on "Showtime Basketball" (h/t SI.com's Madison Williams), in which he had this to say about the Miami Heat if they add Damian Lillard to their team:

"You put them together, they won't make it out the first round."

The Miami Heat are considered the favorites to acquire Lillard via trade. If they are successful in doing so, they will need to sacrifice some of their depth. Pierce believes that losing depth will be too much to handle for a team that participated in the play-in tournament last season.

Pierce's latest take should come as no surprise. He spent most of his career playing for the Boston Celtics, who are rivals with the Miami Heat. Pierce had many battles against the Heat in the playoffs. Boston was just eliminated by Miami in the playoffs. Pierce has several reasons to be unhappy with the Heat right now.

Still, his comments come as a surprise considering what the Miami Heat were able to accomplish last season. Without their third-leading scorer in Tyler Herro, the Heat were able to take down the top teams in the East and advance to the NBA Finals for the second time in four seasons. The Heat have been eliminated only once in the first round in the Jimmy Butler era. The team that defeated them was the Milwaukee Bucks, who won the NBA championship that season.

It's hard to imagine the Heat becoming worse by adding a top-15 talent to their team in Lillard. However, Pierce does make a good point about Miami needing depth in order to be successful. If the Heat are able to acquire Lillard, we will be able to see if Pierce lives up to his nickname, the Truth, or if he is simply spreading a biased opinion.