WALTHAM, Mass. -- What do you do when your team has its best season in 15 years, surpasses all expectations, restores fan interest and comes within two victories of the NBA Finals?

If you're Paul Gaston, you tell your basketball people to try something new this year because it costs too much to keep the team intact. Then, you sell your team for the largest figure in NBA history -- $360 million -- and walk out the door, counting the dollars along the way.

Oh, and you leave the team without a point guard and with three players earning the NBA maximum salary. But, hey, that's someone else's problem now.

	Jim O'Brien has another mess to clean up -- this time the one Paul Gaston left behind.

There's a new look to the Boston Celtics, one forged more out of desperation than desire. Coach Jim O'Brien didn't want it this way, but he has a pretty good track record in the cleanup department. You may recall he oversaw the Herculean task of picking up after Rick Pitino left town. O'Brien has five new faces on his team, and some of them are going to have to play well. You've got to like the Celtics' chances because O'Brien got it done with Pitino's players and he got it done without Pitino's players. He has cast this team in his own mold: tough, committed and opportunistic.

O'Brien has done an outstanding job in his 1½ years as the head coach of the Celtics. He got them to the conference finals last year and then pleaded, publicly and privately, for Gaston to re-sign key free agent Rodney Rogers. Gaston humiliated his coach, and his general manager, by allowing them to offer Rogers a deal he knew would be rejected. But the old owner, who was already working on his exit strategy, then approved a deal for Vin Baker, which left fans scratching their heads and left the new owners with a whopper of a payroll next year and beyond.

Last year's Celtics were all about chemistry. Gaston never saw that. Now, it's a new bunch with five new faces, the most publicized of which is the soon-to-be 31-year-old Baker, who is promising to resurrect his careening career and reputation. He has said the same things before. But he has always craved to play in Boston. It's a time-will-tell proposition.

O'Brien leans on his veterans and he has the same trusty twosome that led the team last year, Antoine Walker and Paul Pierce. They are leaders as well as scorers, and they may be the best 1-2 offensive punch this side of the Staples Center.

There also is the same, unwavering commitment to defense epitomized by Eric Williams, now slimmer, quicker and injury-free. The Celtics' defensive mindset led to 49 wins in the regular season and nine more in the postseason. There are some intriguing newcomers in Bruno Sundov, a 7-foot-3 center who likes 3-pointers, and Shammond Williams, a 6-1 guard who likes 3-pointers.

The more things change ...

Yes, the Celtics will continue to hoist 3-pointers, and why not? The shot was a critical weapon in their offense last year, and O'Brien embraces it. He encourages his players to shoot it and, surprise, they oblige; no one shot more 3's than the Celtics last year.

But while the 3-pointer might be their public persona, their success was due more to a defensive makeover that was as dramatic as it was successful. Under Pitino, the Celtics couldn't stop anybody. O'Brien took advantage of the rules changes, which allowed for more zone coverage, and imported defensive guru Dick Harter to make sure things went right. The Celtics became one of the better defensive teams in the league -- overnight -- and they have no intention of backtracking this year.

They ended up third in the league in defensive field-goal percentage. "We want to be first this year," O'Brien said. No jaws dropped. Pitino always talked about playing defense, too. No one listened. They listened to Harter and O'Brien and saw the results. Now, the players are proselytizers for the defense-first mantra.

	“	We've got to understand what got us to where we were last year. We understand how good it felt to go as far as we did. To me, No. 17 (championship) doesn't look as far as away as it did this time last year. ”
		— Antoine Walker

"We've got to understand what got us to where we were last year," Walker said. "We understand how good it felt to go as far as we did. To me, No. 17 (championship) doesn't look as far as away as it did this time last year."

Well, who's to fault the lad for some truly forward thinking? No one seems remotely worried about the fact that there is no real point guard in camp. Or that the departed Kenny Anderson, who is a point guard, played a huge role in the team's success last season. There are three point candidates, all of whom are shooting guards in a point guard's body. Walker may lead the team in assists anyway; he's an excellent passer and ball handler.

No one seems concerned that Baker won't be integrated seamlessly into the Celtics' offense and defense. He does give them an interior option they haven't had since Pervis Ellison. (That says more about their recent options than it does about Baker.) Whether Baker starts is another question. O'Brien understands that Tony Battie plays better as a starter and doesn't want to lose him, so Baker may, at the beginning, come off the bench.

Oh yes, the bench. We had to get there eventually. Do Baker, Tony Delk, Bruno Sundov and Kedrick Brown do anything for you? Here's what they do do -- they make O'Brien pray that Pierce and Walker stay healthy.

Sundov will get some minutes in Rogers' role from last year. Delk is what he is -- a streak shooter who shoots 38 percent. The acrobatic Brown may get some time at small forward and shooting guard. He had his moments as a rookie last year, mostly with spectacular dunks and blocked shots. Walter McCarty, Ruben Wolkowyski and rookie J.R. Bremer round out the roster, which, thanks to Gaston's line-in-the-sand stand, will stay at 12 -- unless the new owners see fit to add a player along the way.

The Baker deal was an enormous risk. It would have been so much simpler and easier to re-sign the free agents. But you gotta go with what you have, and O'Brien already has proven he can make chicken salad out of you know what. That he has to do it all over again wasn't something he wanted or envisioned, but it wasn't his call. That was made by his former boss, who now is out of the way, counting all the money he wouldn't let his team spend to try and keep the good times rolling.

Peter May, who covers the NBA for the Boston Globe, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.