BOSTON - Rarely, if ever, has a team looked so positively vulnerable, yet so downright infallible.

Call it the Celtic Paradox.

On the verge of the one of the great choke jobs in sports history, the Boston Celtics instead strangled the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday, 99-65, in an otherwise needless Game 7 of an Eastern Conference quarterfinal series. The Celtics held the Hawks to 26 points in the first half, playing with such conviction that any thought of a consummating Atlanta upset disappeared right along with vanishing Hawks point guard Mike Bibby.

So once again, the Celtics are the team to beat in the East.

Maybe.

“You know, the regular season — it comes and goes,'' said Celtics captain Paul Pierce, who scored a game-high 22 points. "You have your small tests throughout the course of the regular season, but there is nothing like the playoffs. There is nothing you can do in the regular season to prepare you for the playoffs, (a) seven-game game series. (This was the) first time (for) us being together as a group in the playoffs, so I think, as a team, what we learned is the intensity, the focus, and the concentration you've got to have, especially on the road.

“I think it is easy for us at home. You've got the crowd behind you, you got energy, everything that is working for you,'' Pierce added. "But on the road, we definitely learned something on how we've got to approach games. It was really good for this series to end up the way it ended up and I am real happy with the results.''

But then, that's the beauty of the playoffs.

All that really matters is the bottom line.

Or does it?

Questions, questions, questions. From the start, these Celtics were surrounded by them. A year ago at this time, after finishing the 2006-07 season with the second-worst record in the league, the Celtics were preparing for the NBA Draft Lottery. The ping-pong balls came up snake eyes and the Celtics ended up with the fifth pick in the draft, and thoughts of Greg Oden or Kevin Durant clanged off the rim like a cinder block.

At the nadir of their existence, many teams would have changed coaches.

The Celtics opted to change rosters.

Less than two months after the latest Boston lottery disaster (see: "Duncan, Tim''), the Celtics had traded away No. 5 (the pick) for, well, No. 5 (Kevin Garnett), albeit via a circuitous route. No. 5 (the pick) went to Seattle for Ray Allen, whose arrival in Boston convinced No. 5 (The Big Ticket) to accept a trade to the Eastern Conference.

Just like that, the Celtics went from 24 wins to 66, the best record in the league and the greatest single-season turnaround in NBA history. Head coach Doc Rivers went from a nitwit to a tactician.

Special feature Luck of the Irish How the Celtics went from worst to first in one year

Now here we are in the springtime again and the volatility has returned. It is difficult to figure out just what the Celtics are. Like the New England weather at this time of year, the Celtics are changing with astonishing speed: On the one hand, Boston has an unmatched trio of stars in Garnett, Pierce and Allen; on the other, none of the three has ever won a title. Standard rules no longer apply. Boston is old and hungry, simultaneously experienced and immature. In the series against the Hawks, Boston looked every bit as schizophrenic as Atlanta, going 4-0 at home and 0-3 on the road.

The Hawks, who went 37-45 during the regular season, finished a mere 12-32 away from Philips Arena, including playoffs.

But the basketball world expected it from them.

Special feature Title town Images of the 17 championships that the Boston Celtics have won

"We learned a lot about ourselves through this. We learned what we're made of,'' Garnett said after Game 7. "I don't know what message the rest of the league takes (from it), but this is our home court and we're confident here. I don't know if there's a message there, but this is how we play.''

Most of the time.

The good news? No one will sneak up on this team anymore, beginning in Round 2, when the Celtics will meet the defending Eastern Conference champions, the Cleveland Cavaliers, and the demigod known as LeBron James. Boston will have the home court advantage, which bodes well given the Atlanta series, and the Celtics have a clear advantage in depth. While James was the top scorer in the league this year, the Celtics — who did not have a player rank in the top 15 in scoring, rebounding or assists — were the best team.

Special feature NBA Finals matchups Schedules, stats and predictions for Lakers vs. Celtics.

Without question, the Celtics this year have the talent to win the franchise's 17th NBA title, though there are suddenly obvious questions about the team's ability to endure the playoffs. As Pierce noted, the playoffs and the regular season are entirely different things. Yet the simple truth remains that the Celtics have won every game they have had to and have been league front runners since the starting gun sounded, and they closed out the Hawks on Sunday with the kind of killer instinct they seemed to lack in Games 3, 4 and 6.

Said guard Allen after the Boston victory: "The performance that we put out there (in Game 7) is very typical of what we have done all year, or who wanted to be.''

At other times, not so much.

And as for tomorrow, who knows?

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