After toiling on several losing teams, Paul Pierce is relishing his first appearance in the NBA Finals.

The Providence Journal / Glenn Osmundson

BOSTON –– At this point last season playing in the NBA Finals was the furthest thing from Paul Pierce’s mind.In fact, in June 2007 there were rumblings that Pierce might be traded and coach Doc Rivers might be fired.

Pierce, Rivers and the Celtics had suffered through an embarrassing 24-58 campaign, one of the worst seasons in franchise history and the second-worst in the NBA. An injury to Pierce in midseason opened the door for 18 straight losses.

The NBA Draft Lottery produced no help. The chance to draft either center Greg Oden or forward Kevin Durant evaporated when they drew No. 5.

Rather than use the draft pick and make the team even younger than it already was, General Manager Danny Ainge started the process of making trades and acquiring free agents in a frenzy that continued for nine months.

First to arrive was perennial All-Star Ray Allen, who figured to take some of the offensive pressure off Pierce.

Then in mid-summer Al Jefferson and several other players were sent to Minnesota in exchange for All-Star forward Kevin Garnett in a trade that ranks with the Bill Russell deal in the 1950s and the trade that brought Robert Parish and Kevin McHale in the early 1980s.

With the starting five (Pierce, Garnett, Allen and youngsters Kendrick Perkins and Rajon Rondo) as the team’s nucleus, Ainge then worked on the bench.

Veterans James Posey and Eddie House were acquired before the season, and late in the season point guard Sam Cassell and forward P.J. Brown signed on.

The results were immediate and dramatic. Boston jumped out to a 29-3 mark on the way to a 66-win season that was third-best in franchise history (68 wins in 1973, 67 wins in 1986).

Last Friday night at the Palace of Auburn Hills, after Pierce led the Celtics to an 89-81 Game Six Eastern Conference finals victory over Detroit to catapult the Celtics into the NBA Finals, Pierce and Rivers couldn’t hold back their emotions.

They hugged each other on the court and celebrated the biggest single-season turnaround in NBA history.

“He said he loved me, and then he said, ‘Thank you for sticking with me,’ and I was thinking the other way around,” Rivers said of their heartwarming exchange after the game. “It meant a lot, obviously, but we’re going to enjoy this … But then we’re not done. We want to be here, and we’re at the exact spot that we thought we would be, but we have some more playing to do.”

Pierce said, “I’m just happy to be a part of this, man. It’s been a long process. I could write a whole book on my emotions right now. But I’m just happy to be in this position, still with the Boston Celtics.

“It makes me think about a year ago today what I was doing. To be in this position with the same team going to The Finals, it’s nothing I can really put into words.”

The Celtics have played 102 games with each other, but they say that they are still learning, as evident by them taking seven games to beat the Atlanta Hawks and Cleveland Cavaliers, not winning a single game on the road in those series.

Against Detroit, the second-best team in the East, the Celtics won two of the three they played on the road.

With three All-Stars who could score, Rivers decided to make defense the focal point of the season because, he felt, they could score with the best of teams.

His players bought into his philosophy and Boston held its opponents to 90.2 points per game during the regular season, which was the second-best mark in the NBA.

The Celtics have held their opponents to an NBA-best 87.3 points per game in the playoffs.

“I thought once the top players, me, Kevin and Ray bought into what we wanted to do, it just flowed through the rest of the guys,” Pierce said. “It seemed like every day we looked forward to playing defense, looked forward to getting into defensive drills and it was a lot of intensity.”

Rivers told them that they would have to sacrifice their individual statistics for the betterment of the team and they listened.

“You have to give yourself to this team and you have to trust my system, and some of it may not fit what you do, but it’s going to be good for the team,” Rivers said he told the Big Three at the beginning of the season. “If we have an agenda-less team, we have a chance, and if we don’t, and I was honest with them, we have no chance.”

Garnett said, “We came in and we’ve been working since day one. I can definitely say that it has been a process. You guys see some of the finished product, but we do debate and we do debate strongly, but we consider ourselves very respectful of each other, three professionals that know that in order for this thing to work, we all have to give something up.

“And I think we all not just talked about it, but we’ve been about it.”

Because the Celtics believed in each other and in their coaching staff, they are making their first trip to the NBA Finals in 21 years.

“It’s a dream come true,” Pierce said.

roblee@projo.com