“No matter what, Boston is always going to be Boston,” said Lakers star Kobe Bryant. “You don’t ever get the feeling they’re going to be bad for very long. They’re always going to find a way to get back into it. It’s the same with us. That’s what happens with the great organizations.

“Off the record?” he said. “They scare the (expletive) out of me. If things go right for them in the draft and they’re able to use some of those other picks to make a deal or two, they could be right back in this thing.

“And when you look at some of the teams in our league that have been stuck in the mud for years, it has to be hard for them to watch Boston set themselves up so fast.”

“Every team has an opportunity, especially a team like Boston who’s willing to do whatever it takes to win,” said Howard. “I think people will want to go play with the Celtics because of the history there. It’s going to take time, and, you know, a lot of people aren’t patient. They want things to happen right away. But you have to remember that everything takes time, It doesn’t happen overnight.

“I think Boston’s going to be right back. They had a couple of years before they got KG and Paul together where they were terrible and nobody wanted to be a Boston fan at that time. Then KG and Ray Allen come, and everything changes. They win and everybody’s happy. But it takes time.”

“I’ve never really spent much time in Boston. I don’t know it too well,” he said. “But I think as far as playing there, we love competing against those guys. I think they have a great coach and they have a ton of youngsters that are up-and-comers.

“Boston is a great city. I’m sure free agents would love to go there, especially with [Brad] Stevens as a coach. He’s a guy that can win basketball games. He gets guys to play for him. They’ve been having good success there, even in his first year, and he has a lot of young players. The coach has a lot to do with it, but yeah, Boston is a great place.”

“It’s a sports town, when it comes to hard-core fans, when it comes to the sport that you love being the biggest thing about a city, it’s one of the main attractions from that standpoint,” Wade said of Boston. “And the rich history, obviously. I don’t think [location] matters. As you see with Ray and KG, it was the right time for them. They were there and did some amazing things, so you never know.

“At the end of the day, you don’t get to spend as much time in [your home] city as you think you do. You’ve got to sell the culture of the organization. You’ve got to sell winning. You’ve got to sell personnel. Those things, to me, are important.

“Obviously, there’s certain cities that are not going to get the look of certain guys, that doesn’t mean only New York or only LA or only San Francisco, these cities are going to be the only ones to get these players. It’s selling your organization and what you’re trying to do, more than anything.”

“Nobody expected that move [the Big Three] to happen at that time,” Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony said. “Nobody expected Garnett to go there, Ray Allen to go there. I don’t think people expected Rondo to turn out the way he’s turned out.

“Boston had some down years, and somebody like Paul, I have to take my hat off to him because he dealt with it, stuck with it. And then they brought the conglomerate over there and you see what happened.”

Kevin Durant said he became emotional when he watched the montages the Celtics put together for Pierce and Garnett last month.

“I was there when Perk [Kendrick Perkins] got his tribute and you can tell they love those guys much more than wins and losses,” Durant said. “As a player, you can definitely appreciate that.”