LISBON – It is approaching midnight, and a sleepy Lisbon neighborhood has turned in for the night. Only the funky beat of Curtis Mayfield’s “Superfly” breaks the silence in Justin Poulin’s home.

“Darkest of night

With the moon shinin’ bright

There’s a set goin’ strong

Lotta things goin’ on”

Poulin, a 33-year-old father of three, is sitting at a desk in his home office, laptop and desktop computers fired up, mixing board at the ready.

With the push of a button, he brings Boston Celtics fans around the world together to revel in the happiest night they’ve had in 21 years, if not their entire lives.

“The Boston Celtics are going to the NBA Finals,” Poulin says moments after the team’s 89-81 dispatching of the Detroit Pistons in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals on Friday night. “They will face the L.A. Lakers. The days of old are resurging. How elated are you now?”

And so begins “Celtics Stuff Live,” billed as the only toll free call-in webcast produced specifically for Celtics fans.

For the next two hours, Poulin, known on the show as “Jughead,” will simulcast with his co-hosts, Jon Duke (“The Duke”), who is in his Rockport home, and Jim Metz (“JB”), who chimes in from his Melrose, Mass., home. The trio will break down the Celtics/Pistons series, make some early observations on the upcoming Celtics/Lakers Finals, celebrate with callers and interview some Boston-based sportswriters.

Poulin, who by day is a Registered Nurse, keeps the show moving as host, technical director, engineer, board operator and pretty much whatever else it takes to keep a webcast on the air. In the two-and-a-half years since he created the show with Metz, Poulin has learned to juggle the responsibilities, whether he’s in his office, in his car or high above courtside at the TD Banknorth Garden.

“He’s the Kevin Garnett of the crew. He’s the straw that stirs the drink,” said Duke, who is the town adminstrator for Hope, a town near Camden. “He’s the guy that not only gets the technical side of the show together, but he also helps to bring us together.”

“Without Justin, there wouldn’t be a show,” he added. “The amount of time and energy he puts into this enterprise is sometimes commendable and sometimes nuts.”

“Honest radio”

Poulin and Duke are children of the Larry Bird Era. Metz’s green allegiance goes back to the days when Bill Russell made winning championships an annual rite of spring in New England.

They met as fans on one of the many Celtics-related blogs and message boards that can be found on the Internet. Poulin, who was doing an NBA podcast and Metz, who had experience in amateur radio, wanted to do a program focusing on their favorite team. Duke joined them six months later. They did the show together for months before their first face-to-face meeting. The webcast first originated from their own web site, then became tethered to CelticsBlog.com, their current host.

They webcast live from 7 to 9 p.m. every Sunday night year-round and following every Celtics playoff game. On Sunday nights, they are usually joined by a guest or two, often Celtics or NBA beat writers. Maine native Gary Tanguay was their first “big-name” guest. Comcast Celtics play-by-play man Mike Gorman is a frequent contributor.

Poulin has a press credential and covered every Celtics home game this season. Following those games, he produces what he calls a “podcap,” usually from the Garden, although, if the game goes late, he has to scramble to make it out of the parking garage before it closes .

“Right now, I’m the only one that can manage it, technically speaking, so if I travel, we do a podcast,” he said. “Sometimes we do it in the Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. I have wireless Internet, so I would sit in my car with a converter and plug in all my equipment and literally sit in my car and record it with a voice-over IP (Internet Protocol).”

During the playoffs, the trio has done a live show from their respective homes immediately following road games. They have regular callers, but through word of mouth and blog, new listeners are clicking in every day.

“The best part about the Internet is you’re really allowed to be content and topic-specific and really get in depth,” Poulin said. “Terrestrial radio shows are very region-based and so as a result, they have to hit a broader audience. The beauty of the Internet is you can get specific about those things. You can really break it down and focus on one topic, and I think people are really looking for that.”

Save for the occasional tangent into 1980’s professional wrestlers, they give the hard-core Celtic fan exactly what they’re craving. The tone is pro-Celtics, of course, and the trio pulls no punches when it comes to the team’s enemies, be they opposing players (they compared Detroit’s Richard Hamilton to a weasel) and coaches or any referee who has ever slighted the Green. They consider popular ESPN.com columnist (and avowed Boston fan) Bill Simmons a traitor for constantly criticizing Garnett and coach Doc Rivers and touting the Lakers’ strengths. But they will also criticize the Celtics when it is appropriate, with the same level of frustration their fellow fans feel.

“It’s honest radio. It’s honest talk,” Poulin said. “All three of us say it how we see it. I know a lot of times people try to try to generate discussion in a certain way, but our listeners will call us on that. That’s a good check, because that is our bread and butter. Even if it’s not great radio, it’s honest radio.”

“We try to have fun with it, but the point is we’re the spot for diehard Celtics fans from around the world to converse,” Duke said.

Ride to the top

Celtics Stuff Live is one of the most popular Boston podcasts on iTunes, but it’s not a money-maker, Poulin said. The show has one sponsor, a New Hampshire coin dealer, and is pretty much a break-even venture.

“Our overhead is only, like, 50 bucks a month right now,” he said. “It started around $100, but I slowly figured out ways to cut back on the costs.”

“If we were to set up a business model for this, we could make the product even better, but money has to enter into it,” he added. “At this point, I’m a professional fan. That’s basically how I look at it, so I do what I can do and sometimes it’s really good and sometimes it’s okay. You get that kind of variability with it.”

The trio is trying to make the show bigger and better, and there are signs that it’s popularity could reach new heights. The filmmakers who produced “Still, We Believe,” a 2004 documentary about Boston Red Sox fans, are making a film about Celtics fans featuring Poulin and the show.

But for now, time and money are tight. Poulin didn’t get home from the Celtics’ last home game against the Pistons until 3 a.m., and couldn’t get to bed until after he’d wrapped up post-production at 4 a.m.

“With the family and not making money at this, it’s kind of hard,” he said. “I did get a little burned out with the travel this season. But it’s important to stay connected and get to those games, so I will probably do a little bit here and there, but I probably won’t do game-by-game coverage (next year).”

Besides, Poulin admitted, it would be tough to top this season.

“I’ve been locked in on the Celtics since Danny Ainge got hired (as the team’s Director of Basketball Operations in 2003),” he said. “I still keep an eye on the Patriots, and the same thing with the Red Sox, but I pretty much devote all my sports fan attention to the Celtics now. Now that the Red Sox and Patriots are the Yankees of their respective sports, it’s not as fun.”

“The whole fun of sports,” he added, “is the ride to the top.”