Tom Curran • E-mail

So, had enough of The Hub yet?

Boston — the self-styled Athens of America, a place known for higher learning and chowder-thick accents — has been the epicenter of American sports in this millennium.

First it was the Patriots morphing from NFL punch line to full-fledged Goliath, with Super Bowl wins in 2001, 2003 and 2004 before a perfectly flawed 2007 campaign that will be revisited for decades.

Then it was the Red Sox freeing themselves from the yoke of 86 star-crossed seasons with a World Series win in 2004 and then another one in 2007.

And now — again — it’s the Boston Celtics. The NBA’s most storied franchise is being tentatively embraced by fickle Boston fans who haven’t paid attention to it since the Bird-Parish-McHale Era ended quietly 16 years ago.

Wednesday night, the Celtics finished the 2007-08 regular season with a beating of the New Jersey Nets to finish with the NBA’s best record at 66-16. This, after going 24-48 last season, then missing out in the NBA Draft Lottery last May for a chance at drafting a franchise-altering player.

The quickness of their ascent — all linked to the pennies from heaven deals that brought them Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen — caught the entire NBA by surprise. Were they for real? Now, they have everyone’s attention. And with the NBA playoffs beginning this weekend with Boston taking on the 37-45 Atlanta Hawks in the first round, Boston is a legitimate favorite to win its 17th championship and complete one of the NBA’s most stunning single-season turnarounds ever.

It’s really an embarrassment of sports riches in Boston. Last Saturday, Boston College won the NCAA men’s hockey title. Next Monday is the Boston Marathon. Next weekend Boston College quarterback Matt Ryan could be the first pick in the NFL Draft. The last, great Tiger Woods-Phil Mickelson duel? At the TPC-Boston last September.

And it’s not just sports. On TV you have Boston Legal, the HBO series John Adams and Cheers reruns out the wazoo. On the radio, you have Augustana singing, “I Think I’m Going to Boston,” and Hollywood’s ongoing infatuation with the city, marked by “The Departed” and “Gone, Baby, Gone.”

It’s all Boston, all the time. And, given that Bostonians have never had a low opinion of their city’s nationwide preeminence, it’s enough to cause an anti-Boston blowback. You could feel it with the nation’s embrace of an “anybody but the Patriots” mentality during the last NFL season. You can feel it even now when you can’t seem to get away from the Red Sox, whose rivalry with the New York Yankees has become the constant backbeat to every Major League season. And you may soon feel it as the Celtics begin their drive for their first championship since 1986.

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“I think it’s legitimate,” said Glenn Ordway, afternoon drive-time host on Boston’s sports radio station, WEEI. “People here will say they’re being disrespected by the national media but when the Yankees were dominant, what did people do? They developed a hatred for the Yankees. No matter where you go, when a team is dominant over a period of time, people get sick of them. They want newness. They want a fresh package. They get sick of it, then everyone roots for the underdog.

“And it’s a more powerful thing for people to dislike when it’s times three,” added Ordway. “The Celtics are a little fresh and might not get the same backlash. But for the Red Sox to dominate your TV set in Iowa or Nebraska, eventually you say, ‘Enough. Enough with the Red Sox, enough with the Patriots. Gimme the Steelers, gimme the Chiefs. I’m in Boston hell.’ ”

How NBA fans collectively react to these Celtics over the next month or even two will play out. Maybe they, like the Patriots and Red Sox before them, will be a team people pull for because of the circumstances surrounding their reemergence.

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After going 24-58, the Celtics hoped to get lucky in the draft lottery and get one of the first two picks in the draft so they could take either Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. But Boston’s run of bad luck stretching back to 1986 continued when they wound up with the fifth overall pick.

Since the team took Len Bias with the No. 2 overall pick in 1986 and had him die of a cocaine overdose days later, it had been a continuous stretch of tragedy and bad luck. Reggie Lewis, the Celtics next young star, died in 1993. In 1997, the Celtics had the best chance in the lottery at the No. 1 overall pick. Instead, the Spurs got it, drafted Tim Duncan and won three championships with Duncan as the centerpiece. The team went through the tumultuous tenure of Rick Pitino who famously upbraided locked-in-the-past Celtics fans by saying in 2000, “Larry Bird is not walking through that door, fans. Kevin McHale is not walking through that door, and Robert Parish is not walking through that door. And if you expect them to walk through that door, they're going to be gray and old.”

Meanwhile, with the team slogging through mediocrity — never good enough to contend or bad enough to get a player to change the franchise’s fortunes — all but the most passionate Celtics fans soon stopped paying attention.

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