Boston’s P.J. Brown looks for shooting room against Cleveland’s LeBron James and Joe Smith. Brown and his teammates will be looking for a victory today at the Garden against the Cavaliers.

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The Providence Journal / Kris Craig

Welcome to Groundhog Day in expensive sneakers.

Another Game Seven.

One game away from putting the balls away for the summer.

One game away from seeing all these championship dreams go up in smoke.

Sound familiar?

It should.

It was the same story two weeks ago, almost word for word.

Only then it was the young, upstart Hawks who had inexplicably extended the Celtics to seven games, the young Hawks with their below.500 record in the regular season and their roster full of faceless guys, few of whom had yet to do anything significant in the NBA. The Hawks, who figured to have no chance in a Game Seven in the Garden, then went on to live up to the pre-game expectations, getting blown out and taking the Celtics off the hook.

Make no mistake. If the Celtics had got bit by the Hawks two weeks ago it would have been a loss of historic proportions, the kind of ignominious defeat that would have erased all the good feeling this team has built up — the Celtics back in the public eye again, talked about, cared about, the Garden a nightly love fest.

They didn’t, of course, and the thinking seemed to be that this team had dodged a big bullet coming right at them.

But here we are again.

Groundhog Day in baggy shorts.

Only now it gets a little more precarious, even if history and the strength of the two teams tells us that the Celtics should win this afternoon

Once again, the Celtics are a heavy favorite. Once again, for the Cavs to win they are going to have to come into the Garden this afternoon and battle the crowd and NBA history and all those old ghosts that used to come down from the rafters in Game Sevens and help push the Celtics over the top, the past sprinkled in with the present.

“It’s one game and we’re going to let out our hair down and go into Boston and steal one,” LeBron James said moments after Friday’s game.

LeBron knows.

He knows the Cavs are not supposed to win this afternoon, not in an NBA semifinals where the home team is 21-2.

But LeBron is the X-factor here, giving the Cavaliers what the Hawks didn’t have, that one megastar with the potential to win a game by himself, like he did last year in Detroit when he threw in 48 against the Pistons in the conference finals and got the Cavs to the NBA Finals.

So what in the name of Red Auerbach is going on here?

This is now six straight road games the Celtics have lost in these playoffs, six times when they haven’t looked very much like the team that won 66 games in the regular season, the odds-on favorite to win the NBA title.

This is now six straight games when the Celtics have looked very ordinary, just another team that can’t win on the road, as if every road game has become the equivalent of the dreaded West Coast trip in the winter, mail it in.

In their first game in Cleveland they essentially were blown out, and Friday night they only scored 69 points, as if their offense never made it out of baggage claim.

Maybe more important, these six roads games have exposed the flaws in ways that the regular season never really did. From the beginning of the Atlanta series it was apparent that the Hawks were more athletic, and the Celts’ inability to run any consistent offense has hurt them against the Cavs.

Ray Allen has become a virtual nonentity, few open looks. Friday night he was 3-8. Paul Pierce was 5-15. Of the Big Three, only Kevin Garnett had a bigtime game, and in this series he’s become mostly a jump shooter, not a dominant low post scorer.

In fact, at the tail end of the second quarter when the Cavs outscored them, 17-2, they, once again, relied on too many jump shots.

This is the team that won 66 games in the regular season?

Makes you wonder.

But ever since Allen and Garnett joined this team last summer this is supposed to be about putting another championship back in the rafters, not being life and death in the playoffs with teams that were supposed to be little more than opponents.

This is supposed to be about getting to big games in June, about bringing the glory days back. Or at least getting to the conference finals against the Pistons.

Anything else is going to seem like a failure.

That’s what is at stake here.

So here they are again this afternoon in another Game Seven, a game we’ve already seen.

And, like two weeks ago, the Celtics should win.

And if they do, the fact they had to go seven games will quickly become yesterday’s news, as irrelevant now as the regular season. The playoffs are all about win, and advance, the ultimate bottom-line business. Save the style points for the highlight films.

But, once again, all the pressure is on the Celtics.

They are the team with everything to lose this afternoon. And if that happens, this is season is going to be viewed as one big tease, and this team will be remembered as the one that gagged in the playoffs, losing a Game Seven in the Garden, losing to a team they should beat.

That will be its legacy, everything else will become irrelevant, like the echoes of yesterday’s cheers.

Sound familiar?

It should.

It’s the same story as two weeks ago, almost word for word.

Groundhog Day in expensive sneakers.

breynold@projo.com