It was ironic last summer when the Minnesota Timberwolves fired longtime head coach and executive Kevin McHale and replaced him with Kurt Rambis. One of the most famous plays of the 1984 NBA Finals between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers was in Game 4 when Rambis had a fast break and was poised for a layup when McHale clotheslines him and knocks him to the ground. This play, which in the modern NBA would likely have earned McHale a flagrant foul and a possible ejection from the game, sent a message to the Lakers that Boston was not a team that would play passive defense or go down without a fight. The Celtics went on to win that game to tie the series and eventually win in seven games. The two continued to play key roles in the Celitcs-Lakers rivalry in recent years. Before taking the head coaching job in Minnesota, Rambis served as an assistant coach for the Lakers. Although McHale did not have a position in the Celtics organization after his retirement, Kevin McHale was the general manager who agreed to trade Kevin Garnett to his old team and Garnett was a huge part of the 2008 championship team and the current playoff run the Celtics have made in 2010. Many Celtics fans believe that McHale deserved another championship ring just for that transaction.
The irony and the storylines in the Celtics-Lakers rivalry run a lot deeper than McHale and Rambis. There were the personal rivalries like Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain, and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. There are people who have been on both sides of the rivalry like Bill Sharman and Don Nelson. Both current head coaches, Phil Jackson of Los Angeles and Doc Rivers of Boston, played for the Celtics division rival New York Knicks in their younger years. Paul Pierce, the Celtics captain, grew up a die hard Lakers fan, hating the Celtics, in Inglewood, California. Pierce's nickname, "The Truth", was actually coined by former Laker Shaquielle O'Neill back when the Celtics were a below-average team, but Pierce was an up-and-coming young star in the NBA. The two teams combined own more than half of all the NBA championships ever and their commitment to success consistency is unparalleled by any rivalry in any sport. Though Celtics fans do not like hearing that they are in any way similar to those yellow and purple wearing fans in sunny California, the teams themselves were built in similar ways. In the 50s and 60s, they each had strong cores with the Celtics built around Russell, John Havlicek, and Tommy Heinsohn, and the Lakers built around Chamberlain, Jerry West, and Elgin Baylor. In the 80s, the Lakers were built around Magic Johnson while the Celtics were built around Larry Bird. In this decade, both teams rebuilt themselves around a big trade with a team in the opposite conference that was run by one of their alumni. I have already talked about the Garnett trade with Kevin McHale, but the Lakers also rebuilt by trading Shaq to the Miami heat (whose team president is former Lakers coach Pat Riley) to get Lamar Odom and other players who were used to trade for Pau Gasol. The similarities are uncanny sometimes.
This week, the Celtics will play the Lakers in the NBA Finals for the 12th time. Boston has won 9 times of the previous 11, but as always, this series will be an interesting one. I was going to talk about more than just basketball in this post, but I guess I got sidetracked. I am not ignoring the Bruins epic collapse or the BP oil spill, it's just that I have trouble focusing on too many things at once. I am still at my house for another week before the camp season starts, so I might talk more about those things.
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