While the somewhat contrived controversies that have enveloped the Patriots the past several months were a summer (and winter and spring) blockbuster to the rest of the country, it was all little more than a sequel for many in these parts.

Nods and wry smiles were very much in fashion for Celtics types who recall well the 1980s. A highly successful team accused of subterfuge? They’d seen that movie — and now the remake.

“Oh sure,” former Celtics general manager Jan Volk said when asked if he had flashbacks amid reports of deflated footballs and general paranoia among Patriots opponents. “I’d been through that experience — not with the same media frenzy because the media environment is very different now than it was then, but in many ways, it looked very familiar.

“There were all sorts of presumed advantages that were being taken by Red (Auerbach) — by our whole organization, but obviously Red was the marquee person.”

Danny Ainge, a player then and president of basketball operations now, was hit with the parallels during the summer.

“Belichick is Red, and Brady is Larry,” he said.

“It’s crazy, all the things that are being said, but a lot of it was really familiar. I’ve been watching all this, and all I can think of is that it’s a real compliment to the Patriots.”

Ainge laughed at the recollections.

“I remember Red being accused of making the heat go on in the Lakers locker room and not in ours and that we knew all the dead spots on the Garden floor and all sorts of mythical things,” he said. “Coincidentally, no one was accusing the Celtics of doing any of that stuff after Larry left. After Larry retired, there was no more cheating by Red and the Celtics.”

Volk has his own favorite charge.

“I liked how they said there were dead spots on the old Garden floor that we had mapped,” he said. “The aspect that was really funny was that we changed the dead spots from game to game. I’m not sure exactly how you do that, but that was a common theme — not only were there dead spots but that we moved them around so we always had the advantage.

“Then there were presumptions that the locker rooms were bugged, that the locker room was unnecessarily warm particularly at playoff time, things like that.”

What seemed to escape mention was that the Celtics dressing room also was a sauna. It was left to Kevin McHale to take an old broken Bruins stick — McHale being the only player in the room to know what a hockey stick was — and unlatch one of the windows above the lockers, bringing in a fresh, locomotive breeze from the North Station tracks below.

“Kevin had held a hockey stick before, but the key was he was tall enough to reach the windows,” Ainge said.

“Teams kept saying we were doing stuff, but none of those things happened. The only thing we knew about the Garden floor is that there were dead spots, so we couldn’t try the tricky dribbling that some guys wanted to do. I remember Tiny (Archibald) complaining a little bit about the Garden floor sometimes because he couldn’t do some of his fancy ballhandling. Everyone we played knew there were dead spots, but we certainly didn’t know where they were.”

Said Volk: “There was never a recognition that what was going on in the Garden was evenly distributed. We were every bit as warm in our locker room as they were in theirs. And if there was no hot water, which happened on occasion in the winter, we didn’t have hot water either. Those are problems that were associated with the building that were presumed to originate with us and that we had control over them, which, of course, we did not.”

Unlike the Patriots’ situation, the charges against the Celtics never really became a league matter.

“I don’t recall ever having that conversation with the league office,” Volk said. “I think they pretty much understood the limitations that we had in our building, that if there were problems, they were problems for us as well. I don’t ever recall having a conversation where the league was looking to cast blame.”

And interestingly, the Celtics never went out of their way to shout their innocence in matters of locker-room temperature control and floor tampering.

“I think the initial reaction is to be offended by the notion that you are not playing by the same rules, but we never really dealt with those things publicly while sort of smiling inwardly that, well, I guess we’re inside their heads,” Volk said. “It wasn’t as though we had a master plan to do that, but if that was the end result, that was fine.”

For his part, Auerbach seemed to revel in others’ suspicious minds.

“Yeah, of course he did,” Volk said. “Like I said, my first reaction was to be offended, but Red sort of enjoyed it. He was at it a lot longer than I was, and those accusations and insinuations were something that followed him for pretty much his whole career in Boston.”

Bill Belichick might be getting a kick out of it now.

“I think the Patriots have that going,” Ainge said. “I mean, listening to the stories of Peyton Manning, who goes outside of the locker room to have his meetings at halftime, the Patriots have accomplished everything they need to just by having that legend. And that only happens when you’re good.

“Of course, it was all about the talent with us, and I think it’s the same situation with (Tom) Brady. I don’t know what went on with the footballs, but all I know is his quarterback rating is off the charts since he’s had them pumped up more.

“If you don’t know that Brady’s one of the best ever, then you’re just being silly. But you have all these people talking about him having an advantage. Well, no, he could play with a Nerf ball and still get something accomplished.”

In terms of getting things accomplished in the NBA’s board room, Volk found the Celtics’ success worked against them.

“I was the Celtics representative on the competition committee, and I learned fairly quickly that if the Celtics, the Lakers, the Knicks or the Bulls would make a suggestion in an open meeting, there would be general resistance to it without even considering its merits,” he said. “There was just a presumption that if those teams — the Celtics being probably the preeminent one among them — wanted something or suggested something in terms of a rule change, that other teams should be against it.

“Consequently, over time I developed relationships with people from other teams, and I would go to those folks to make proposals on my behalf. I realized that if we were going to have any input whatsoever, it would have to be through somebody else, somebody who was willing to listen and make a proposal as though it was theirs. That’s what happened for quite a bit of the time that I was involved with it.”

Teams at the top are envied. It has always been thus. The Roman Empire spawned more than its fair share of haters.

“It’s human nature,” Volk said. “You see it in the NFL now. I saw it in the NBA then.

“I would say just kind of joking around that, ‘They don’t like us, but it’s for all the right reasons.’”