Best Series Ever? Puhleeease

Game 7. Eastern Conference Finals. 5:23 left in the game. A majority of the starters on both teams have been on the bench for the last three minutes. . . resting . . . knowing they'd need it cuz the last five minutes were gonna be like the rest of the series--hellacious. The two teams have been going hammer and tong all season long. They split the regular season series, 3-3. Now they are knotted at 3-3 in the playoffs.

The winner gets an invitation to the 1981 NBA Finals, and will be the prohibitive favorite against the surprising Houston Rockets. The Celtics trailed most of this game by a margin of 5-11 points, and currently trail by 7, 89-82. The starters return for both teams. Every possession the rest of the way is like a round of a heavyweight bout, Ali-Norton. The Celtics' offense scores 9 of the games' final 10 points, the defense preventing the opponent from scoring a single field goal in more than five minutes of play. The green goes on to defeat the Philadelphia 76ers 4 games to 3, after once trailing in the series 3-1. Boston then plunders Houston in 6 games, hoisting banner 14 in the process.

There you have it. My submission for the best series ever. We won't even talk about the 1982 ECFs, where the Celtics again returned from the dead to tie a series at 3-3 after trailing 3-1, only to lose the 7th game at home. Nor will we talk about the 1974 NBA Finals, where the road team won five of the seven games, including the last four in a row. And of course we won't talk about any series not involving Boston.

Bob Ryan had this to say the 1981 ECFs:

As has been written approximately 173,464 times in the past week, only three other teams in NBA history had successfully extricated themselves from a 1-3 hole in a seven-game series. But in none of the other cases did the comebacking team win the three games it needed by margins of two, two and one points. In none of the other cases did the comebacking team continually rebound from serious deficits the way this Celtic team did in the past three games. It is neither a hyperbolic, nor an ethnocentric statement to contend that this was, without question, the gutsiest series comeback in the 35-year history of the world's foremost basketball league.

Now let's talk Bulls-Celtics. First round of the 2009 NBA playoffs. The winner goes on to lose in the very next round. The regular season Celtics-Bulls contests were a bunch of forgettable ho-hummers. The Celtics were playing the series without two of their top eight rotational players. And people thought this was the best series ever?

I just don't see it.

UPDATE

So that's where this post originally ended.

Now dig this:

The losing team won three games by two points.

One of the greatest players in the history of basketball shot a 14-foot free throw in the clutch.

A brash rookie waltzed in and took over the series.

An even brasher coach slugged the owner of the other team prior to one game.

A seven-game series came down to the final second of the second overtime when one of the most inventive and daring plays ever conceived failed because the best player on the team missed a shot he had made, and would subsequently make, umpty-ump zillion times in his career.

Welcome to the 1957 NBA finals, better known in Boston as World Championship No. 1.

We'll talk more about the 1957 Finals tomorrow.