Mixing It Up : Celtics Have Used a Little of Everything to Regain Their Position Among NBA’s Elite

Once more for posterity?

One more NBA title chase underscored by Bird’s jumpers and Red’s fragrant Havanas, a suggestion so brash that a year ago it would have knocked the sox off Bostonians?

If the Boston Celtics of the first half of the season are any indication, the suggestion is more than a tease.

Heading into weekend play, the Celtics were No. 1 in shooting, No. 1 in field goal defense, No. 5 in scoring average, and No. 1 in the blowout category--games won by 10 points or more. Oh, and at 29-8, they lead the Atlantic Division by--blink to be sure--seven games and have the second-best winning percentage in the NBA, behind Portland. All this despite having gone 3-3 since Larry Bird recently went out with nerve problems in his lower back.

Brian Shaw is back and acting very Celtic again after having strayed from the nest for a year to play in Italy. Bird has made the transition to power forward. The big three--Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish--have emerged from the Ice Age and into an era in which speed wins. Kevin Gamble had gone from being virtually unwanted to a starting forward shooting 61.1%, No. 2 in the league, while earning bread crumbs at $375,000.

This clearly isn’t a throwback to Celtic tradition--16 championships, the most recent in 1986--except for the bottom line.

“Of course things are going much better than anticipated,” Coach Chris Ford admitted without hesitation. “I don’t think anyone could have dreamed that we would have gotten off to such a good start.”

Which has created a most unexpected problem.

Said Gamble, “Sometimes the intensity is not there for 48 minutes. We get lax. Sometimes, things come so easy for us.”

Let Gamble, whose future last January seemed as doubtful as his team’s, ponder recent history for a moment and he may reconsider. Maybe that same shadowing is why this beginning is more pleasing than usual for the Celtics, who were 23-14 at the same stage last season.

Much has changed since a year ago. But much has stayed the same, too.

SOMETHING OLD

Robert Parish is 37, Larry Bird is 34, Kevin McHale is 32.

“We were obviously concerned how the young and old would mesh together,” Parish said. “The real question was how quick we would jell. We definitely have surprised a lot of people. That was good for us, though, because it built a lot of confidence. We were shaky after the butt kicking we got the last couple years.”

The old guys have nine championships among them. The day Celtic veterans need to build confidence is the day of some serious eyebrow raising.

“There were a lot of people who said we were dead,” said the 42-year-old Ford, who, like five of his nine predecessors, also played for the Celtics. “The whole thing was how we had to dismantle the big three. Our belief was we didn’t have to dismantle the big three, we had to surround the big three with players who could get the job done. We still felt that Robert, Kevin and Larry could play and still be among the elite.”

That much has been proved. Before being sidelined, Bird averaged 19.2 points, 8.7 rebounds and 7.7 assists. Except for the assists, those figures are down from his career averages, but that he’s in the lineup 37.3 minutes a game, and has played 40 minutes or more 12 times, is an endorsement that outweighs his scoring. Struggles since his departure serve as Exhibit A.

“There’s been a lot said about our running game, and we’ve been running effectively,” said Dave Gavitt, the former Olympic coach who left as commissioner of the Big East Conference last May to run the Celtics’ basketball operations.

“But equally as important is the half-court game, where we’ve gotten good motion. . . . That’s Larry’s game. When Larry Bird retires, people aren’t going to remember him backing a guy down one on one. They’re going to remember the touch passes, the look-aways, the back doors, the sneaks along the baseline, the quick reversals, the open shots. By getting all that motion back in the game, I think we have been maximizing Larry’s ability.”

McHale, in the starting lineup as long as Bird is out, is a leading contender to be named sixth man of the year.

Parish is playing at a younger man’s pace. His 29.6 minutes a game are right on his career average. One of three Celtics to start all 37 games, he was the NBA’s fourth-best shooter as of Friday, at 58.8%.

SOMETHING NEW

Ford is a rookie head coach on any level. Reggie Lewis, a reserve in high school on a team that starred Reggie Williams, Muggsy Bogues and David Wingate, is 25. Gamble is 25. Shaw is 24. Dee Brown, 9 years old when Parish started in the league with the Golden State Warriors, is 22.

Kids do the darndest things. These, especially Shaw and Brown at the point, have turned the Celtic course toward speed and quickness. That means fast breaks on offense and, just as important, a defense in which the role of the guards is to play a suffocating press.

“I’m not a big stat man, but two areas I look at are that we’re No. 1 in field goal percentage and we’re also No. 1 as far as holding opponents to the worst shooting percentage,” Ford said.

“Both those categories lead directly to defense, because it means we’re stopping the opponents from getting easy baskets, and we are translating those misses into easy scoring opportunities. That’s where our running game comes in--after we’ve played good defense.”

That Boston would end up with both Shaw and Brown took some maneuvering, which turned on Shaw’s protracted negotiations to return to the NBA after a season as Danny Ferry’s teammate with Il Messaggero in the Italian League. When the draft came around and the Celtics were still unsure of his status, they used the 19th pick to select Brown from Jacksonville. Had Shaw been in the fold, they might have gone elsewhere.

And for the first time since the Mesozoic Era, the draft selection didn’t come from Arnold Auerbach, though the weight of his opinion should never be discounted. Red brought in Gavitt to be his successor for day-to-day operations, so Gavitt, by all indications, had the call. Something new can also come in the form of a 53-year-old lifetime New Englander who spent 21 years as a coach.

After a string of failed No. 1s--Charles Bradley, Darren Tillis, Greg Kite, Michael Young, Sam Vincent and Len Bias from 1981-86--the Celtics got it right. Lewis (‘87), Shaw (‘88) and Brown (‘90) are keepers.

The two most recent picks stand out in contrast.

Shaw is 6-6, from the West Coast--Oakland--lists fishing and playing cards as hobbies, and once led the Pacific Coast Athletic Assn. in rebounding while playing point guard for UC Santa Barbara.

Brown is a 6-1 leaper from the East Coast, a converted swingman from college. He has designed his own computer programs, but his athletic ability may prove to be the biggest virus to the opposition. He once blocked a shot by Milwaukee’s 6-11 center Jack Sikma.

“Everyone has been playing a lot more loose,” Shaw said when asked to contrast the makeup of this team against the one from 1988-89, his previous season in the NBA. “We’re playing a style that I think is conducive to everybody’s ability. Everybody enjoys playing this way, and it takes the pressure off the big three and is developing a lot of the younger players sooner than if we had been playing the other style.”

SOMETHING BORROWED

One of the lasting impressions from training camp is the competition between Shaw and Brown, which turned some scrimmages into drag races. Speed may have been a part of Celtic terminology, but not much in recent years, and certainly not like this.

“I know how unusual it is,” Brown said. “But, basically, that’s why they got knocked out in the first round of the playoffs the last two years. They got tired at the end, and that cost them so much off their half-court game because teams could double up on a couple players and shut them down.

“So sure it’s different. Teams are now trying to stop the Celtics from running, and no one’s ever seen that before.”

At least not during the most recent championship campaigns, when steady Dennis Johnson was the primary ballhandler.

“A couple of years ago, the break might have been there and we didn’t really look for it,” Shaw said. “Now, we’re looking for it every time. That’s a first option.”

Ford, then an assistant to Jimmy Rodgers, saw the success of other teams and realized up-tempo was the way to go. So he took the same idea most other teams have adopted, ran it by the big three and planned for the future.

Without Johnson and Jim Paxson back from last season’s team, management gambled against a transition filled with potholes if the new style didn’t click immediately, especially if the veterans didn’t mind saying so out loud. Gavitt called the idea of handing the new Celtics over to a couple of point guards with a grand total of 54 NBA starts a real risk.

The result is that with 44% of the season completed, the Celtics have already forced 537 turnovers, or 54% of last season’s total.

The bonus is that although Bird, McHale and Parish might have been forced to find a new gear, they spend less time in the half-court setups and save bodily damage normally incurred in post play. Scoring is also up by about five points a game.

“The ability to run,” Ford says.

SOMETHING GREEN

Something blue? Yeah, right.

The Celtics are the Celtics again, which is to say, winning. Equally important, after losing 11 games at Boston Garden last season, the most since 1978-79, they have won 19 of 22 at home and had an 18-game victory streak there before falling to Golden State Wednesday.

“Where it hurt the most was not playing well at home in the Garden,” Parish said of last season. “Teams used to come in and have this scared look. That look. Now they come in and it’s like they know they could win.

“It was a very humbling experience. A huge slice of humble pie, that’s for sure. Mentally, we could no longer have that quiet arrogance we had worn for so long. There was no respect anymore. That’s one thing all teams go through. The Lakers are doing it now. It’s unfortunate, but every team has to go through it.”

After the week ahead, the Celtics may have their best indication yet for this season, especially if Bird returns. They play Monday at Detroit, Wednesday against Detroit, Friday at Philadelphia, Sunday against the Lakers.

From there, they have to worry only about that matter of the second half of the season, not to mention Celtic expectations.

“What you perceive as bad and the rest of the league perceives as bad is not what the Boston Celtics and Boston fans perceive,” Ford said. “We don’t consider winning division titles and getting into the playoffs a big deal. It’s all or nothing. That’s how the Celtics perceive it. Just having a good record, that doesn’t mean anything. They only hang championship flags here.”