These aren't your father's Lakers and Celtics but the age-old rivalry returns when these two clubs once again battle it out for the NBA title.
It's the final that everyone was awaiting. The Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics, both No. 1 seeds in their respective conferences and two of the most storied franchises in the NBA, will play for the title and when it is all done they will have claimed exactly half the championships in the history of the league.
In just over two weeks, no later than June 19 if it goes to Game 7, the NBA will crown its 62nd champion. To put things into perspective, the Lakers and Celtics will have combined for 31 titles, exactly half of the banners handed out and this will become official when one team steps on the stage to join Commissioner David Stern at the conclusion of the series. The franchises will meet for the 11th time in the Finals, only the Dodgers and the Yankees have met that many times in the four major team sports (MLB, NHL, NBA and NFL) with Boston holding a 8-2 edge.
So while this contentious rivalry, and yes Boston fans, it is a rivalry because the Lakers have won the last two times they have met, erasing the 8-0 Celtic dominance, is revisited, if you haven't lived it live in some way shape or form, not on classic TV, before this, hopefully you will get a taste of what all of us over the age of 30 felt in the 70's or 80's.
And while I'm at it, I'm invoking the "you can't talk to about it to me rule" unless you have sat on the edge of your seat watching a Boston-Los Angeles series unfold live. The "you can't talk to me about it rule" was born at the Summer Olympics 1992 when the one-and-only 'Dream Team' had NBA titleholders, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, and Michael Jordan joking that nothing Patrick Ewing said mattered because he hadn't won a ring.
There was nothing like a Sunday afternoon when the two teams squared off three times in four years from 1984-87. The best pick-up basketball game in Toronto, run Sunday evenings at George Brown College's Casa Loma Campus, was put on hold until the Boston-L.A. tussle was concluded and then all the boys arrived at gym to play pick-up at the same time, playing analyst and breaking down the game. I can still feel sense of anticipation and excitement and hear it all even now 21 year later, the exquisitely produced openings with the CBS theme music and reverberating in my head.
You'll get my "Fave Five" most indelible moments when it comes to the Lakers and the Celtics in my next writing but in the mean time you have to understand that both of these squads were teams that you either loved, or hated; and what made for great basketball was, they loved to hate each other.
If you were a fan, it was unbelievable reality TV. I used to think there was something wrong with me remembering every seemingly trivial detail but I have come to find there are others revealing there are just as crazy as I am.
The past has also made an impression on the current players as well. Paul Pierce, who grew up in the shadow of the Fabulous Forum playing his high school ball and Inglewood High where he used to cheer against Boston, is now one of the once hated Celtics, trying to win his first NBA title. While he may have hated it as a kid, there was Pierce leading the chants of "Beat L.A.!" in the Boston locker room after the Celtics defeated the Detroit Pistons to advance to the Finals. Boston's Kevin Garnett, talked about being a kid and his mom telling him not to sit too close to the TV as he listened to Dick Stockton, call the games for CBS. There was the Lakers' Lamar Odom talking about the high intensity contests before "cable TV" was big in the United States.
They say things are never the same when they are revisited when there are such rose-coloured glasses viewing images and stories that have grown into folklore. It's a long way from "Hondo" to Rondo after a 21-year hiatus, but, just maybe the series will live up to the hype. But then again, why wouldn't it? It's the Lakers and Celtics in the Finals.