Take what you remember of Doc Rivers as a Hawks point guard, sew it to the fact he still bleeds from Atlanta's playoff loss to the Celtics in 1988, and you may find it unthinkable that he's now part of Boston's fabric.

He seems so quintessentially non-Celtic.

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Doc Rivers helped the Celtics improve by 42 wins, the biggest turnaround in NBA history.

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But watch him run pro basketball's flagship, talk to him, pick the brain of the player who has been with him longest and add the fact he has presided over the biggest NBA turnaround ever — from 24 wins last regular season to 66 this — and you just might generate a new thesis:

Rivers may be the right man in the right place at the right time, a golden giftee when Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen were traded to the Celtics.

"The plays that didn't work last year work a little bit better this year," Rivers said after his team practiced Tuesday to play the Hawks in Game 2 of their first-round Eastern Conference playoff series tonight. "It's not just the talent, but the veteran talent. To me, who you are doesn't change at all."

That's not quite right because Glenn Rivers hasn't been the same.

The Celtics' turnaround may have hinged upon myriad roster moves made by general manager Danny Ainge the past 10 months, but every team needs a pin to hold the hinge. And Rivers has morphed to fit.

"Doc, I think he adjusted, and he's great at this because he was a player," 10-year Boston veteran Paul Pierce said. "He adjusted to his team, the players around him. With a young team, he was a little bit harder.

"With veterans now, I think he understands we're going to police ourselves and get the work in. He doesn't have to teach and do all the little things."

Rivers was drafted in the second round by the Hawks in 1983 as a junior out of Marquette. Neither while he played for Atlanta from 1983-91, nor when he played for the Clippers, Knicks or Spurs, was he remotely Celtic-esque.

He is not a New Englander by birth, nor is he from a small, crusty backwoods town, like Boston legend Larry Bird of French Lick, Ind. He did not play with a set of moves unique unto himself, as did former Celtics forward Kevin McHale.

He had no personality traits peculiar enough to earn a nickname like former Boston center Robert Parrish, nicknamed "The Chief" after the stoic Indian character in the movie "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Former Marquette coach Rick Majerus bestowed "Doc" upon Rivers because he wore a Julius "Dr. J" Erving T-shirt. He is from Chicago, and his game was good — carrying him through 13 NBA seasons and leaving him as the Hawks' all-time assists leader (3,866) — yet no threat to land him in the Hall of Fame with Bird and Co.

But another "Big Three" — Garnett, Allen and Pierce — may help cement Rivers as a lifetime member of the Green team. Boston won 16 NBA titles from 1957-86, never going more than four years during that stretch without winning it all. It's been 22 years since green was last gilded.

Coaching at this level is part ego management and massage, and Rivers is on point again.

In the same city where Red Sox manager Terry Francona has worked around oft-flammable left fielder Manny Ramirez to win two World Series, and Patriots coach Bill Belichick routinely takes a Corey Dillon or Randy Moss and folds tempestuous players into championship-caliber teams, Rivers is taking a page.

For one, he's made offensive and defensive coordinators out of assistants.

"In the past I've had to do both, and it took up time," Rivers said. "Basically ... I've given Armond Hill the offense. And Tom [Thibodeau] controls the defense. It's really given me a chance to free time up and coach the team, see the team as a whole. I talked to a lot of coaches, football coaches because that's the way they've always done it. I've always wondered, 'Why haven't we done that?' "

Rivers' friend, former NBA guard and Suns broadcaster Eddie Johnson, said coaching successfully is about having pieces to work with, and then not overworking with them. And Rivers may be working like a maestro.

"Is Doc prepared to coach in this league? Heck, yeah," Johnson told the Boston Herald. "He played point guard and had to control the tempo of a team. The leadership of Doc, his understanding of the game, puts him in that position to succeed."

Remaking a team with a talent injection is not always a slam dunk.

"We kind of bumped heads," Pierce said. "Had a lot of trips to his office. As time went on, I matured. This season, we've all made sacrifices. If you look, all our numbers are down from ... most of our careers. But it's all for the good of the team."

So the great green mesh continues.