Chris Ford Is Clearly in Charge in Boston : Basketball: Former Celtic took control from the outset in his first season as an NBA head coach.

First quarter, fifth game, Celtics up by five, but Coach Chris Ford doesn’t like what’s going on. When the quarter ends, Ford walks up the floor, gets in Brian Shaw’s face.

“Why did you call that play?” he barks.

Shaw lifts his hands, palms up. “Because Larry ...” Ford cuts him off.

“Don’t listen to Larry,” Ford says. “You listen to me.”

There is no doubt in Shaw’s mind about who is running this team.

When the second quarter starts, Bird, who had 10 first-quarter points, finds himself on the bench.

“From day one,” Robert Parish says, “Chris let everyone know who was the boss. He made it known that he wouldn’t tolerate any (bull) from anyone. That’s the way it should be.”

As a rookie coach, Ford has taken this team -- a mix of aging superstars and young talents and egos and question marks -- and restored Celtics Pride, that swagger Boston fans cling to as theirs, and theirs only.

From the lightning 29-5 start through the late-season skids, Ford has been unflappable.

That Ford played 10 years is more a testament to his basketball smarts than his talent. Ford likes to tell kids, “If you saw me playing in a pick-up game over there, you’d wonder how I was a professional basketball player. You’d say, ‘No way.’ But if you put me in a team setting where there’s a clock and there are fouls being given out and the score is being kept and all those things, then I can hold my own.”

Vitale traded Ford to the Celtics for Earl Tatum and a second-round draft choice. A year later, in 1979, the three-point line was established. Ford hit the first three-pointer in NBA history, and shot 42 percent from three-point land that season.

“There are different ways of surviving,” Ford says. “and you have to pick your way to survive. That’s the problem with a lot of athletes these days: They think that they have to be the star, that they have to do it their way instead of finding the best avenue.”

Ford was a starter on the Celtics 1980-81 championship team. Two years later, he was retired, doing some coaching at Boston College and some radio work with the Celtics. Then K.C. Jones was named Celtics coach and took Ford on as an assistant. Ford was one step closer to running his own team, something he had been training for since his days on the blacktop courts of South Jersey.

“I grew up in an Italian neighborhood (in Atlantic City),” Ford says. “Basketball and sports were the things. Everyone played. And we’d all hang on the corner together, or in gyms and schoolyards, and everyone stood out on stoops and stuff. It was life in the city.”

Ford’s coaching style is tinted with the city game. He can hit you with a sledgehammer, and he can hit you with a feather.

On the sidelines, Ford will use bleep words. If he sees fit, Ford is not averse to orally flogging his players. He will not unbutton his double-breasted suit jacket -- his wife, who picks out the clothes, wouldn’t like that -- but he may jump and stomp.

Then there’s the flip side. Shaw once banked in a straightaway 18-footer and Ford said, “Nice touch, Brian.” Lewis once shot an air ball that turned into a tip-in by Parish and Ford said, “Nice pass, Reggie.” McHale once asked to guard Utah’s Karl Malone and Ford said, “Why? You haven’t been able to stop him all night. What makes you think you can do it now?”

Says McHale, “Chris has an unbelievably good bench demeanor. I really thought he’d be a psycho when he became head coach because all he ever did was yell at us when he was an assistant. But he’s pretty cool.”

Only once this season has Ford’s cool left him. After mid-season, there were rumors Bird’s teammates were dissatisfied with his shot selection; Ford glared at the media after a game and said, “If these stories continue, I’m going to take appropriate action.”

“I’ve had a great time. I really have,” Ford says. “There really haven’t been any problems, as far as the locker room goes. That’s why I really went off the handle with that rumor stuff, because there was no such problem.”

Then there is the celebrated training camp shouting match between Bird and Ford. Bird was supposedly unconvinced the Celtics would really run, and Ford convinced him otherwise.

“I never denied that happened,” Ford says. “Hey, things like that should be allowed to happen. I mean, that’s the nature of the game. But if the media sees these things, they write it up. And people are asking, ‘What’s the problem? He blew up at him, and the other guy blew up at another guy. What’s going on? Why the big problems?’ That’s crazy. The coaches and players understand that.”

Says Parish: “He screams at all of us at some point or another. And some of us scream back. Nothing wrong with that.”

Ford has been honest with his players, and they have responded. He also is open to ideas from his assistants, and they have responded.

“Once you get to know Chris as a person, you strive to be like him,” Jon Jennings says. “He is the most secure person I’ve ever met. Amazingly, he has the ability to walk out of the arena and say, ‘Now, my family life begins.”’

Ford has four children ranging from age 6 to 15. His wife, Kathy, is an accomplished pianist and gives private lessons. That is, when she’s not teaching music at a local school, attending her childrens’ games -- or her husband’s games. Kathy jokes that she goes to more games than her husband.

“There are always reasons not to find time for your family, and all those reasons don’t count for anything,” Ford says. “What always amazes me is that, as children get older, there are less and less parents around at PTO meetings and sports events and stuff. You’d think that as the kids get older you’d really want to see them doing their thing -- because the time you’re going to be with them is getting short.”

How long will Ford’s time with the Celtics be? He’s not kidding himself. He’s going to enjoy the whole ride, then go home.