For the first time since having two surgeries to clean out a nasty infection in his right knee around Christmas, Paul Pierce spoke before Saturday’s game and said he plans to be with the team on its upcoming road trip and is hopeful to return to practice as soon as Monday.

Pierce, who was wearing a white circulatory wrap on his right knee, said the infection and subsequent pain came upon him quickly following the team’s home-court win over Indiana on Dec. 22.

[Pierce explains what he had to go through and how scary the infection was.]

“It was a situation I got home and I was sort of sitting back and relaxing and then sort of felt a slight pain in my knee and then over a 10-to-15 minute period, it just got worse and worse,” Pierce said. “It went from just kind of hurting to sore to bad to extreme in like a 15-minute period, which was crazy.

“I called Eddie Lacerte about 1:30 in the morning and he knows I never call him unless it’s really bad. So, he came over to the house and checked it out. We went to the hospital that morning, doctor checked it out and we did the surgery. An infection somehow got into my leg.”

Pierce said after his first surgery on Dec. 23 his white blood cell count skyrocketed to 40,000 indicating an infection. The doctors then went in on Christmas Day to clean it out again and isolated the infection. He said he doesn’t have a particular game in mind for a return.

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