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If Massachusetts is a key state in the upcoming fall presidential campaign and Barack Obama is looking to make an impression, he might think about putting Ray Allen on the ticket.

Seriously.

I made a visit to Boston last week to catch Game 2 of the Eastern Conference finals, and the big impression was just how much love the crowd in the new Garden has for the struggling veteran Celtic guard Allen.

Yes, he played his college ball at nearby UConn, but that was years ago.

Yes, Allen possesses substantial personal class and style, but, hey, this is Boston.

I have a confession to make. Back in the late ‘80s I wrote and produced a fan guide for five seasons called the Celtics Greenbook. I used to love games in the smelly old Garden, with its chipped and aged parquet floor, with all those banners, with all that history.

I loved watching those Larry Bird Celtics move the ball and find the open man.

Just as I loved watching those Magic Johnson Lakers with their pressure D and their up-tempo game and passing brilliance.

See, I’ve never been a pure partisan. I just love pro basketball, and I love to see it played well, whether it’s Los Angeles or Boston or Chicago or New York. Well, maybe not New York. I do have certain limitations. But I do love pro hoops and I do love to see it played with a high degree of integrity. The integrity is critical to pro basketball, because it either has tremendous integrity or it quickly devolves into something about as useful as pro wrestling. Which helps explain why I have such deep admiration for Tex Winter, because he is a great guardian of the game (more on this at another time).

Anyway, the days in the old Garden were magical. I’ve often described those battles between Larry and Magic as pro basketball’s Age of Camelot. I treasure every moment of that era. It’s one of the reasons I so much enjoy collecting pro basketball history, interviewing anyone from that era. I have hundreds of interviews recorded on tape from and about those days. When I get a little bored, I get that stuff out and listen to them all over again.

Yet, despite all that fun, the one real negative that we all presumed was the racial climate in Boston.

Yes, I’m well aware of the litany, as any Bostonian will quickly remind you. The Celtics and Red Auerbach were the first NBA team to draft a black player (pro basketball actually integrated before the NBA), the first NBA team to start five black players, the first NBA team coached by a black man, etc.

Still, everyone knows Boston’s racial reputation. For chrissakes, back during the old Celtics glory years somebody broke into Bill Russell’s home and shit in his bed. What a way to treat the superstar who literally carried your team to 11 titles in 13 seasons.

By the ‘80s, the basketball public was focused on Boston’s collection of highly skilled white players. Bird. McHale. Ainge. Walton. Wedman. The list went on.

Yes, the coach was K.C. Jones, that hard-nosed, sweet-hearted man of color, but the perception was that a mean white streak ran through Boston’s heart, a factor that Spike Lee and numerous other humorists took great delight in pointing out.

I haven’t spent a lot of time in Boston over the past 15 years, so my trip last week took me down a poignant memory lane. Man, how I miss that old Garden and all the characters and elements.

I was struck by how much the new Garden duplicates the diffused, green-tinted light of that old Garden. The photographs of Kevin Garnett and his teammates look the same as the classic haze of the old Garden, so much so that it’s satisfyingly eerie. Garnett in some ways inhabits the same milieu as Russell.

The truly jarring element in the huge new Garden is that it’s still filled with a largely white crowd — the bad dancing replays shown on the jumbo-tron are absolutely hysterical — and this overwhelmingly white crowd dotes on a virtually all-black team.

You can make what you want of the circumstances, you can apply all the social theory and commentary you want about the situation, but it’s better left at face value: Boston has a deep and abiding love for its largely black basketball team.

For years, the fans in Boston have been rather sophisticated in their basketball knowledge. Yes, that’s hard for Lakers fans to accept with all the years of partisanship and pain. But the Celtics crowds have long been a Greek chorus led by the Globe’s Bob Ryan. Like Lakers fans, they care deeply about the game and they know it well.

So it’s not a hard stretch to understand why those Boston fans have been so unflinchingly supportive of Ray Allen. Yes, it is pro basketball. Yes, there is talk radio and the Internet and all the atmosphere for fans to call Allen a tired old, overpaid dog in the midst of this playoff shooting slump.

But these fans know basketball. They know that Ray Allen has spent his career playing well, playing with class, honoring the game. They have given him a Larry-like respect. And they were rewarded in Game 2 of the Eastern finals with his rediscovered aggressiveness and a 25-point outburst (sadly, it wasn’t enough to prevent a Celtic loss).

Allen, for his part, feels that respect and says that’s why he absolutely loves playing in the Garden in front of that crowd.

Whatever happens in the Eastern Conference finals, there’s definitely the sense that they’re all in it together. The Celtics made that clear Saturday night by going to Detroit and producing a convincing victory.

If the Lakers somehow manage to vanquish a very tough-minded San Antonio team, if the Celtics somehow manage to survive in the East, well, I know I’m way ahead of the game here, but let’s just say there’ll be no one more stoked for that than me.

It’s Camelot revisited, baby.

With all the emotion and fire and disdain and, yes, even plenty of unadulterated hatred. Just imagine all the birds that will be shot at Jack Nicholson in the new Garden. All the dirty tricks that will be played on the Lakers in their Boston hotel.

Yes, I’m way ahead of things here, but a Boston-L.A. series would have it all. And from what I’ve seen, that would include the fitting and appropriate updates to the perceived racial overtones.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers Told In Their Own Words.

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