A 131-92 review

Somber, somber details keep popping up when studying the December 2008 Boston Celtics.

It’s bad enough that the rest of the country and its ultra-hopeful Los Angeles had to worry about such hoop magnificence as Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, hoping maybe they’d just go ahead and get old, but now you get to Boston in a blizzard and everybody’s talking about . . .

Well, they’re talking about the Red Sox enough to induce nausea, but audible Celtics chatter goes pretty much Rondo-Rondo-Rondo.

You can hear Tom Heinsohn on the TV analysis raving how Rajon Rondo just discombobulated a defense, and you can hear about the Celtics after a game discussing whether Rondo could outrun arena visitor Usain Bolt, and you have Coach Doc Rivers saying, “He has the highest basketball IQ of anybody in my 24 years.”

So holy mercy, let’s pause to ponder the very idea that, six months after 131-92, people around the champions could coo mostly about a fourth player.

And then, let’s add that a certain wing of New England basketball intellectuals, while extolling the gathering improvement of Rondo since June, touts even more the upgrade since June of a fifth, big man Kendrick Perkins, always using the moniker “Perk” in this process.

Cedric Maxwell, the former Celtic turned radio analyst, thinks the 27-2 December Celtics aren’t necessarily superior to the duck-boat-parade June Celtics who mauled the Lakers, not without reserves James Posey and P.J. Brown. But still, there’s this 22-year-old point guard and this 24-year-old center and, Maxwell said, “If anybody could say that Rondo was going to be this good or Perkins was going to be this good, please let them go and speak up right now” because Maxwell wants to consult that person for investment advice.

As Rondo darts prudently around the court, quick as a ghost for 11.6 points and 7.4 assists and five rebounds and 2.4 steals (second in the league) and about a bushel of those cherished nuances the box score hasn’t figured out how to quantify, and as his shooting percentage stands at 54 up from 42 as a rookie, and as Rivers says, “I think the biggest thing is he’s become a great finisher,” it all has such a unique look that Maxwell strains his memory bank for a reminiscent player.

“Maybe Slick Watts,” he said, recollecting Watts’ style with the steals and assists.

So in Boston circa December 2008, it’s possible to go to push through a blizzard to the Garden, see Garnett save a ball flying out of bounds and hurl it to Rondo, see Rondo tear downcourt against Chicago, fake a behind-the-back pass and lay it in, and see the city stand up all crazy.

You might see a black-swan jewel of a performance with 40 assists from one team, 15 by Rondo in basically two quarters, and the whole thing might qualify as dazzling, as if the rest of the country and Los Angeles want to listen indefinitely to descriptions of the Celtics as dazzling.

Then there’s the detail that Rondo rebounds well, so Garnett jokes afterward, “I got one rebound tonight. Try to stay on this team with Rondo and Perk, you can’t get rebounds. They’re gonna trade me.”

And then people such as Rivers mention the sheer size of Rondo’s hands, which Doug Bibby said he didn’t notice until Bibby, Rondo’s coach at Eastern High in Louisville, Ky., took a 10th-grade Rondo to work out with Bibby’s first cousin Mike in Sacramento, and Mike and his brothers said, “Look at his hands.”

And as if all that weren’t sobering enough, Rondo evidently qualifies among those people with, even for an elite athlete, an unusual adoration for toil.

“I don’t like summertime,” he said matter-of-factly the other day after a shoot-around, because of its leisurely trappings and “because I’m not on a schedule.”

He finds himself “more confident in calling plays” than in June, when he went 21-7-8-6 in the 131-92 of Game 6. “I see the floor better. Better rebounder, better passer.”

As he smoothly states his virtual desperation to occupy the Chris Paul tier of NBA point guards, Celtics non-fans might take some time out to curse the Phoenix Suns, who thought Kentucky’s Rondo too small in 2006 and drafted him 21st overall in 2006 for Boston, shipping him there with Brian Grant on a day the Celtics also traded for guard Sebastian Telfair, who would join the multitudes sent to Minnesota for Garnett.

“He’s just not one of those kids who says, ‘Hey, I’ve got incredible athletic ability,’ ” Doug Bibby said by telephone from Louisville. “He looks at himself more as a guy who doesn’t have a lot of athletic ability, and he does the things most guys as gifted as he is might not do.”

Then, his partner in unnecessary workouts apparently would be “Perk,” who calls them “best friends” in yet another nationally chilling detail.

By everybody’s account, Perkins keeps turning up in more strategic places on the floor, setting better picks and embodying more post tips gleaned from the very serious Garnett, whom Perkins credits serially. Last Friday night, Perkins astutely rolled off picks to collect a career-high 25 of the easiest points you ever saw.

“He has evolved right now from K.G.,” Maxwell said. “He has taken on a lot of his tendencies -- one of them, a tendency to be nasty. He has taken on that with pride.”

While many a 24-year-old might misconstrue the blessing of four such fellow starters, Perkins, shooting 59% and averaging 8.6 rebounds, states his preference for overcoming the human fear of “looking into the mirror” and pinpointing faults. “You know, the biggest thing, I don’t want to take any moment for granted,” he said. “I want to cherish every moment. There’s a lot of times I think about it like, ‘Man, I’m part of something special.’ ”

That’s really not very good news for everybody else either, so the nation really doesn’t need to hear Rivers’ reminder that nine of last year’s 12 Celtics were in their first year on the team, or Allen’s testimony to how the mingling works with increasing identity.

“And we argue a lot,” Allen said, shortly after admonishing two teammates making too much clamor in the corner. “Honestly, I’ve been on teams where guys don’t say two words to each other and you like each other, everybody gets along, but when something goes wrong on the floor, nobody says anything.”

In Boston, the distinct joy of family infighting “makes us as good as we are, it’s one of the things,” Allen said, later adding, “I always say, ‘Look, don’t take anything personally on this team.’ The first thing we did, we all humbled each other by picking apart each other’s character early. You got a chance to see who was what, early.”

This got going in Rome, in fall 2007, on the preseason trip, he said and, “I don’t think we realized how good it was for everybody,” Allen said.

So in December 2008, here come some Celtics who have a title and 27-2 and even have Rome. What’s a vast elsewhere to do?