Paul Pierce is now three teams removed from the Celtics, having been traded to Brooklyn in 2013, signing as a free agent with Washington last summer and taking the same route to the Clippers this year.

But he still keeps an eye peeled on the Celtics, and now that he’s been around the NBA block he can offer even better perspective on his former club’s rebuilding progress. It also helps inform his potential next job, since he is considering a future in a front office — and so studies the process.

And while some of Shamrock Nation may have trouble seeing the light at the end of this tunnel, Pierce is more bullish.

“I think they’re putting themselves in a good position for the future,” he said of the C’s. “Until you can get that one guy who’s a franchise-changer, you have to put yourself in a good position, and that’s what they’ve done.

“They asked Danny (Ainge) to get good pieces, good tradable pieces, good foundation pieces, and that’s what he’s been doing. Over time you have to figure out who you’re going to keep and who you’re going to move to get better until you find that piece.”

Pierce then talked about the summer of 2007 when the Celts traded for Ray Allen on draft night, then recruited Kevin Garnett, who had to agree to come to Boston and re-sign before the trade could be made.

Pierce thinks the Celtics can convince free agents to play for them, but he added a caveat.

“I think Boston is an easier sell if you have a team that’s right there ready to win a championship or can get there if this guy signs with them,” Pierce said. “You look at the money and the chance to win a championship.

“Right now, they’re a middle-of-the-pack team. Do you sign there because they have max free agent dollars? If they had an Anthony Davis-type player there, it would be easier to attract a major guy. They need a building block, a super building block.

“But they’re heading in the right direction. They’ve got good players and a good coaching staff. (Coach) Brad Stevens has been really impressive. He’s a really good young coach.”

As for that last comment, Pierce isn’t just tossing out empty praise. Remember, he’s been paying attention.

“I’m seeing what he’s working with, and I’m seeing how he’s motivating them,” said the 15-year Celtics star. “I’m seeing what kind of offense they run, what kind of defense they run, what adjustments they make. You know, I watch the games. I see certain little things that go on during the game that’s the product of coaching. You can see that with him. I watch plenty of Celtics games.”

As for whether Stevens can help attract free agents to Boston, well, that may take a bit of time. But he thinks it will happen.

“Doc (Rivers) was a little more established, and he was a (former) player,” Pierce said. “Doc earned respect in the NBA. That’s the difference right now. That’s something Brad has to get to, and you can see that’s happening. When you see Doc coaching, you always see players from the other teams coming up to Doc and shaking his hand. I think that’s just the respect he earned as a player and as a coach over the years. You know, Brad is going to probably eventually get there.

“And I think the Celtics are going to get there, too.”

By the way, speaking of coaches, Pierce looks back more fondly on Rick Pitino’s Celtics tenure than most of the team’s fans. He enjoyed playing for him.

“I did,” Pierce said. “I enjoyed his competitiveness. I was coming from (Kansas and) Roy Williams, who was similar in a lot of ways. I was already kind of brought up into that.

“Coming from a strong personality of a coach who didn’t take nothing and wanted the best out of you, it was kind of like the same thing. That’s how I looked at the NBA. This was my first experience, so I thought all NBA coaches were like this. You know, I didn’t realize until I got to Doc or even Jim O’Brien, who was a little more laid back than Rick Pitino, how other NBA coaches were.

“But Rick pushed me every single day, and he didn’t give me nothing. I had to earn everything, and that’s why I like him so much.”

THE MORE THINGS CHANGE . . .

Check out this Bill Walton quote from 2007 when the Celtics were trying to rebuild and had yet to pull off the Kevin Garnett deal. Walton told the Herald the C’s would be a desired free agent destination when they got closer to being competitive:

“That’s the challenge for Danny Ainge and Doc Rivers,” he said. “They have to get this team back to a level where those great players say, ‘I want to come to Boston.’

“Right now the places people want to go are Phoenix, San Antonio and Miami, and that’s Steve Nash, Tim Duncan and Shaquille O’Neal and the chance to win. The challenge for the Celtics is to get a player that everyone wants to play with like those guys. The history of the Celtics has always been that they get these core guys — a Bill Russell, a Larry Bird — and they continually build around them. Right now the Celtics are in a prolonged drought, like the Western United States. But with the Celtics it’s a drought of trying to acquire that core superstar that everyone wants to play with.”

Sound familiar?

AS PLAYER, HAMMON’S AIM WAS TRUE

This didn’t make it into our recent account of Spurs assistant coach Becky Hammon, who broke a gender barrier last weekend in Las Vegas by becoming the first female head coach in an NBA summer league game.

Richie Adubato, Hammon’s WNBA coach in New York, recalled her first encounter with a certain NBA legend.

“Reggie Miller was doing one of the Liberty games on TV and he watched us at shootaround that morning,” said Adubato. “He saw Becky and he said to me, ‘Man, that girl’s a great shooter.’

“I know Reggie and his ego, and this was at Madison Square Garden, so I said, ‘Reggie, she’s a better shooter than you are.’ He was like, ‘What, are you kidding me?’ I said, ‘I’ll (tell) you what. I’ve got $200 on me. You take five shots from halfcourt; she’ll take five shots from halfcourt. I’m betting on her.’

“She made two out of five, he made one out of five. I gave her $100 and I kept $100.”

But Hammon wasn’t just an outside threat.

“She’s the greatest finisher I’ve ever seen,” Adubato said. “I’ll qualify that by saying you’ve got (Michael) Jordan and Kobe (Bryant) and some others, but what you’ve got to know is that she only jumps one inch off the floor and she’s 5-foot-6.

“She only had one shot blocked that I remember in the five years I coached her. She could go lefty, righty, go underneath the rim and reverse or throw it straight over her head. She was just unbelievable. The best I’ve seen in the NBA or WNBA.”