08:54 AM EST on Friday, February 25, 2005

The date was November 4.

The Celtics had just opened their season with a loss at home to the 76ers, and these are the words I wrote in a column:

Let's see, the Red Sox have just won their first World Series in 86 years, the Patriots are the defending Super Bowl champions, and the Celtics opened their season last night.

The Celtics? Does anyone care?

Now it's nearly four months later, the Celtics are in the hunt in an awful Atlantic Division, and just got Antoine Walker back.

So does anyone care now?

We'll see.

If nothing else, 'Toine's return makes the Celtics more interesting, no small thing for a new ownership group concerned with ticket sales and creating a certain buzz. It also makes the Celts better, at least in the short term, for they add a good player who has definite leadership qualities to a team that's been in search of a leader ever since Walker went to Dallas in the fall of 2002. Again, no small thing when you're trying to get into the playoffs and climb back into the region's consciousness.

It's not easy being the Celtics these days. Not when the Pats just won their third Super Bowl in four years, the Red Sox already are in spring training, and in the eyes of too many sports fans these are the only two things that matter. There's also a certain backlash against the NBA in general, and a generation of Celtics fans who think it's their birthright to be in the NBA finals every spring, a generation of fans who have no real patience for rebuilding.

That's the problem when you fall off the radar screen, the bleak territory the Celtics presently reside in: How do you make people care?

This has been the Celtics' real opponent this year, a much tougher one than all those opponents coming into the FleetCenter this winter. How do you make people care when the roster is so different than it was just two years ago and the only real familiar face is Paul Pierce? How do you make people care when all the talk shows revolve around Jose Canseco and steroids, A-Rod and the Red Sox?

You bring back 'Toine.

And if Danny Ainge essentially said in the fall of 2003 that the Celtics as presently constituted -- the two-headed monster led by Walker and Pierce -- were not good enough to seriously contend for an NBA title?

Hey, times change, right?

There's no question about that, either. In the spring of 2002, the Celtics were Walker's team. He had the ball. He determined how they played offensively. His presence was unmistakable, both in the locker room and on the court.

Now?

It's a little more unsettled.

From the beginning, Ainge has tried to make the Celtics more athletic, more uptempo. Getting rid of Walker was part of that. But a funny thing happened on the way to the future. For let's not kid ourselves here. No one gets too excited about mediocrity, especially when the roster's full of too many guys no one ever heard of. Not when all those championship banners hang from the rafters, the glory days now staring down as if they're accusers, visible reminders of better days and happier times.

The Celtics have three rookies, all of whom show a modicum of promise. Tony Allen is an athletic defender, even if he doesn't really have a position yet; Al Jefferson seems like a steal for someone who should be a freshman in college, and the word is the Celtics like Delonte West, even if injuries essentially have so far robbed him of his rookie year. They also have a second-year player in Kendrick Perkins, another kid who still would be in college in a different basketball world.

So Walker returns to a different Celtics reality.

The Celtics are on record as saying they want to play uptempo, a style Walker's never been suited for. Ainge said yesterday that Walker's presence makes the team better, without jeapordizing the future. Stay tuned on that one.

They also have a new coach in Doc Rivers, who has spent the first half of the season sending a message to Pierce that gone are the days when everything runs through him, all those nights when he had the ultimate green light. Now, Rivers will try to do the same thing with Walker.

With some clout, no less.

Since Walker is in the last year of a contract, the Celtics have the hammer. If he plays well, he has a chance to get resigned. If not? Sayonara.

So I suspect we won't see the Walker of old, back when the offense ran through him. He's been somewhat tarnished, for one thing, now on his third team in two seasons. He's also rejoining a team whose general manager once got rid of him, and a coach whose style of play seems antithetical to Walker's.

Can he adjust and find a second act after the purgatory that was Atlanta?

We'll see.

Either way, the Celtics just got more interesting.

Whether anyone really cares remains to be seen.