For the first time since the season began, the Celtics had their starting five relatively healthy and ready to play. They also had their second unit essentially set, which has been an ongoing work in progress.

It took a third of the season to get there and required playing through injuries, experimenting with unproven players in key spots and working through the unfortunate exercise of conditioning through games, but finally the 2011-12 Celtics are taking shape.

“Now that we’ve got our major guys it’s almost like starting over, if you will,” Kevin Garnett said. “I hate to say it like that, but it is.”

It was rocky against the Knicks, as should have been expected with Rajon Rondo rejoining his teammates after missing eight games with a sprained right wrist. While Rondo was out, the Celtics had begun to put the pieces back together after a dreadful 5-9 start to the season. They had won six of their last seven running a simplified offense and adding a rusty Rondo to the mix was bound to make things more complicated.

But the Celtics found a way to win a game, 91-89, that as Doc Rivers told his team later, “Two weeks ago, we would absolutely lose.”

What made this victory satisfying is that they won because they executed defensively down the stretch. They forced the ball out of Carmelo Anthony’s hands with well-timed and simple traps and made the immortal Steve Novak try to beat them with an errant heave mere seconds after he had checked into the game for the first time. (An epitaph, perhaps, for embattled Knicks coach Mike D’Antoni.)

They won because Paul Pierce made plays and Ray Allen shook off a sluggish shooting night with a nine-point outburst midway through the fourth quarter when nothing was working offensively. They won a game the way the Celtics of old won games at the Garden when everything was going against them.

“I’m just starting to feel like we’ve joined the season,” Rivers said. “That’s what I’m starting to feel like. There are teams that I thought they came in and attacked the season right from the start. Chicago, Miami. You could see it in their energy and the way they played and I thought we just showed up for the season. Now, you can see us attacking games and playing with the urgency. I just think we’ve joined the season.”

Once Rondo gets himself back in the flow, and there were signs that he was beginning to do that by the third quarter, this is the Celtics team that will play the rest of the season. Coming into the game, the starting five had played together for a grand total of 99 minutes, per basketballvalue.com.

The bench? That’s been an ongoing construction project, but now it seems relatively set. Brandon Bass and Mickael Pietrus have established themselves as the primary reserves. The biggest developments have been the emergence of Avery Bradley as a viable backup point guard and Chris Wilcox as the fourth big man. That’s the crux of the nine-man rotation and they are already forging an identity.

“That group when we had Chris in there and Bass, those two guys and Avery and Mickael Pietrus – those guys are like our grind it out group,” Pierce said. “Our real tough defensive-minded type guys. [Wilcox] gave us a lot of good energy on the offensive rebounds. He made that one shot at the end of third quarter. He really stuck with it. When things weren't going well, it seemed like Chris was always around making good plays for us, and keeping us in it and that was great.”

In the first half, Wilcox seemed overwhelmed by the energy and intensity of the Knicks’ big men. But in the second half he scored six points with four offensive rebounds and when he subbed out for Garnett he drew a rousing ovation from the crowd.

“My first half, man, I may not be playing the next game,” Wilcox said. “I found a way to grind it out, I played hard and good things happened.”

Bradley, meanwhile, passed an important test. We’ve seen what he can do 30 minutes a night while Rondo has been out, but could he translate those performances into shorter bursts playing with the second team? For one night, the answer was a resounding yes.

Matching him up against backup point guards is a tremendous weapon the Celtics now enjoy – witness his evisceration of former Harvard star Jeremy Lin. Rivers was confident enough in Bradley to keep him on the floor for more than six minutes of the fourth quarter and he keyed a tough-minded defensive stand. 

“Avery, I think his reputation now is one that these guys don’t want to bring the ball up on him,” Allen said. “He’s giving us second opportunities offensively where we’re creating offense from our defense. Then it takes the pressure off our bigs because that guard is starting the offense way, way by halfcourt. Those are good things that we’ve seen so far. We don’t know what the finished product is going to look like, but I think we continue to grow and that’s important.”

Now they have to incorporate Rondo back into what has become a winning combination. Before he got hurt he had to do everything just to keep the competitive. Now he can go back to being the general, as Garnett called him.

“Rondo really takes us to another level when you add him to the mix,” Pierce said. “I said this to somebody earlier, ‘We are a playoff team without Rondo, but with Rondo we become a contender.’”

The Celtics put themselves in a hole with their uneven play to start the season, but they are finally creeping up on teams like Orlando and Atlanta in an effort to at least avoid the dreaded seventh seed and a first round date with either the Bulls or Heat. The Sixers are farther away, but still within range at the top of the Atlantic Division.

The games will get harder, as well. They’ve already played 14 at home and have five of the next six at the Garden. Payback for that cushy schedule awaits in March when they head out for a brutal eight-game road trip that features five games in seven nights against the Western Conference.
Two weeks ago, that trip -- which also happens to occur right at the trade deadline -- looked like the final journey of the damned. But now, the Celtics see possibility.

“I think we're in a good place,” Pierce said. “A lot of good things happened the last couple weeks.”

The pieces are in place. The rotation has been established. Now, finally, we will find out just how good this Celtics really is and whether or not they have another run left in them.