Two weeks ago today Doc Rivers was done and so was this incarnation of the Celtics.

The Celtics' season ended in Game 7 of the NBA Finals in Los Angeles and it felt like the end of your favorite TV show.

Rivers sat at the podium postgame and teared up as he talked about his team. He referred to his part in Rajon Rondo's development in the past tense ("Just happy that I was a part of it.") and received applause when he exited the stage, literally and figuratively walking away from the Celtics.

Hollywood can't resist a remake and neither can Rivers. He is back on the bench, the Big Three will likely stay intact and the Celtics saga gets extended for another season. Summer is usually full of television reruns, but this is one Celtics fans will be glad to watch.

"Well, I'm just glad the decision is made and over," said Rivers on a video clip aired on WBZ-TV's newscast last night. "A lot of soul-searching with the family, and you know we want to go after this one more time. We got Kevin [Garnett] and Ray [Allen] and Paul [Pierce] all hopefully coming back, why not? Let's see if we can do it one more time."

Credit executive director of basketball operations/general manager Danny Ainge for this unexpected repeat. Of all the shrewd moves that Ainge has made during his tenure as Celtics overseer, coaxing Rivers to return ranks right at the top with trading for Garnett and Allen. Ainge understood that even if he brought back the same cast of players, convincing Allen to return at a reduced rate and hammering out a new contract for Pierce, the Celtics would still be starting over without Rivers.

Any steps forward without him were going to be steps backward.

Even though he still had a year on his contract, Rivers, who appeared poised to spend a year away from the game as a doting dad, was the most important free agent for the Celtics this off-season. So, while the rest of the league was planning pitches for players like LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and Chris Bosh, Ainge was courting his man, Rivers.

Who else could come in and immediately be able to gain this veteran team's trust and balance the powerful personalities that play on the parquet? Who could placate Paul Pierce, rein in Rondo, reassure Ray Allen and convince KG? Outside of Ainge himself and Phil Jackson (Red Auerbach would rise from the grave before Jackson would ever be allowed to coach this team), only Doc.

Rivers and the Celtics are the perfect match of coach and team. The Shamrock Shaman is the ideal fit for this resilient, remarkable, prideful and petulant group of players. That was obvious during the playoffs, when Rivers pushed all the right buttons to get a team that had woefully underachieved during the regular season to come within a few rebounds of winning its second NBA title in three seasons.

The most obvious benefit of Rivers's return is that it puts pressure on both Pierce and Ray Allen, the team's two highest profile free agents, to come back as well.

The 48-year-old Rivers and the 32-year-old Pierce have the same birthday -- Oct. 13 -- and they better be celebrating it together next season.

You can't be calling your coach and begging him to come back -- to choose you over his family -- and then leave for a few extra bucks or that extra year on a contract. That's disingenuous, which is something that neither Pierce nor Allen are.

Pierce even went on record before the Finals and said Rivers was the last coach he wanted to play for in his career.

"This is the [only] coach that I ever want to play for again, so he's definitely taken my career to the next level," said Pierce. "You got to put him up there with the top five coaches in the league, you got to say Phil [Jackson], Gregg Popovich, and then I put Doc right up there with them."

Rivers took a lot of bullets for this bunch this year. He maintained all year in the face of withering criticism of his team from frustrated fans and media that watched them stumble against fellow contenders and lose too many games to bottom-feeders that they would get it right when it really counted. He never stopped defending or believing in his players -- even when they were driving him to the brink of exasperation.

It's time for those players to repay the favor by following his lead, sacrificing some of their personal preferences, and returning to the Celtics. You can bet that Rivers, who has four children, didn't sacrifice the collegiate senior years of son Jeremiah, a basketball player at Indiana University; daughter Callie, a volleyball player at Florida; and the high school senior year of Austin, one of the nation's top prep hoopsters, to coach a new Celtics ensemble.

"Getting so close this year is probably going to lead us all back together," Rivers said, courtesy of WBZ-TV, to reporters in San Antonio, where he was watching Austin play for the US team at the FIBA Americas U-18 Championships.

Let's hope Rivers is right.

We all know how quickly situations can change.

A fortnight ago, it was a foregone conclusion that Rivers's time with the Celtics had run its course and so had the Celtics' championship contention.

Now, both are to be continued...