Celtics head coach Doc Rivers sold the Big Three on playing as a unit and led Boston to an NBA- best 66 wins in the regular season.

The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

BOSTON — Two days ago, Doc Rivers gave a little plug for James Posey and his role as the Celtics’ super sub this season.

Rivers spoke about Posey’s acceptance of his job in the team’s drive to the NBA’s best record and the fact that he’s clearly sacrificed personal acclaim for the good of the team. He said he’s fortunate that the Celtics have become “a role-playing basketball team and everybody buys in and they do it unselfishly so their numbers are skewed. But we don’t really care about it.”

Rivers could’ve also been speaking about himself. Take a step back and look at the job he’s done this season. After winning 24 games in 2007, the revamped Celtics rolled to 66 wins this season for the biggest one-season improvement (42 games) in NBA history. Rivers gleefully welcomed Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen onto his roster (not to mention Posey and Eddie House, among others) and smoothed over any ego problems that could’ve arisen with Boston’s resident star player, Paul Pierce.

Yet when names are thrown around for Coach of the Year honors, it seems Rivers is not the easy quick pick. In fact, he’s barely mentioned. In one ESPN.com poll of 20 voters, Rivers was selected once.

Does a coach who suddenly welcomes two superstars and a few key supporting actors and goes on to the league’s best record deserve any acclaim? Or did he just roll the ball out and let Allen, Garnett and Pierce go to work?

Garnett and Pierce addressed the issue recently and basically said that the Celtics wouldn’t be sitting where they are entering tonight’s Game Two of an opening-round playoff series with Atlanta if it weren’t for Rivers’ skills. “Doc isn’t really mentioned in Coach of the Year, but people don’t understand what comes along with putting together a whole new team and meshing together the egos of the players you’ve got on this team. That’s work,” Pierce said. “People can’t assume that (since) you’ve got Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen that this is going to be a great team. The coaches have to work on maintaining the right type of attitudes, the right type of egos on a day in and day out basis.”

That’s been one of Rivers’ strong points. As a former player, and a superb one when he teamed with Dominique Wilkins with the Hawks in the mid-1980s, Rivers knows what it’s like to play at a high level in the NBA. He’s dealt with the long grind of training camp, an 82-game season and two months of playoffs. He’s seen how both the superstars and the lowly grunts need to get along on a never-ending carousel of charter planes, buses and West Coast road trips.

Perhaps more than the X’s and O’s, the players say the way Rivers has coached the team’s personalities has been the key to success.

“Doc’s pretty straight up. You know where he’s coming from,” said Garnett. “He doesn’t care who you are or what you’ve done in this league. If he feels like we’re not playing our hardest or he can get more out of us, he says it. There’s not one person he caters to. We love it like that. We love the fact that he treats everybody equal and we know where he’s coming from.”

Getting the team to buy into a defense-first attitude was Rivers’ key move. Garnett, who was named the league’s Defensive Player of the Year yesterday, clearly was the catalyst in a defense that allowed the second-fewest (90.3) points in the league.

The pride the team takes in its defense can help smooth egos on the other end of the floor. Allen, Garnett and Pierce have seen their scoring averages drop by at least five points a game over last season. The Big Three average between 13 and 14 shots a game.

Pierce said that a pre-season trip to Rome and London helped the new group bond early on.

“I’m going to tell you the truth. I don’t think we’d be a 66-win team if we didn’t go to Rome. We’d be good but I just thought that trip brought us together. That was something that just had to happen,” he said.

As Pierce spoke, Garnett looked down but nodded his head in quick agreement. Clearly, these Celtics seem to speak in harmony, thanks in large part to the efforts of their coach.

kmcnamar@projo.com