Purple and Green: 60s Style

June 2008

Purple and Green: 60s Style

The Celtics and Lakers of ye olden days did more than build great basketball teams.

They helped build the National Basketball Association.



And by ye olden days, the reference here is to the prehistoric olden days - before Larry vs. Magic, before McHale clotheslined Rambis, before, you know, the Lakers actually figured out how to beat the Celtics in the NBA Finals.

With apologies to the 1980s, this is about the '60s. And from a basketball perspective, the Celtics owned the '60s. They won NBA titles in '60, '61, '62, '63, '64, '65, '66, '68 and '69. During the one year the Celtics did win an NBA title in that decade, '67, the pain was eased a few months later when the Red Sox, of all teams, submitted their still-hard-to-fathom Impossible Dream pennant-winning season.

And now, in a sense, the Celtics are returning the favor. Just as the Red Sox lifted Boston sports fans from their doldrums after a great Celtics dynasty seemed to be at an end, now it's the Celtics who are lifting the local sports populace up from the ground and giving them a reason to forget about what happened at the Super Bowl a few months back.

How cool is that?

And cheer up, Pats fans: The Celtics rebounded in 1968 and won another title. Perhaps the Pats will do the same.

But the larger point here is that it took a long, long time for the NBA to become a sport whose reach has extended beyond our borders and become truly international, and the Celtics and Lakers of the '60s helped make it happen. Of those nine Celtics teams that won championships in the '60s, six of them - '62, '63, '65, '66, '68 and '69 - beat the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals.

And don't forget to throw in the Celtics' 1959 championship, made possible via a victory over the old Minneapolis Lakers in the NBA Finals. In fact, the building in which the Celtics clinched that title, the old Minneapolis Armory, located just a few blocks from the Metrodome, still stands. How's that for history?

But while the Celtics had the Lakers' number in those days, the games were great, the competition intense. And once Wilt Chamberlain came over from Philly to add yet more pizazz to the Los Angeles roster, those great Celtics-Lakers showdowns took on even greater importance.

It would be nice if, at some point during this upcoming series between the Celtics and Lakers, the NBA did something to honor the great players from long ago who blazed the trail on which we now so happily tread.

Then again, a formal ceremony might not even be necessary. I don't know what your day was like yesterday, but it's doubtful you were able to turn in any direction without someone offering up their own remembrances of Celtics-Lakers showdowns from throughout the years.

Everyone has a story, a memory, a favorite player, a favorite villain. If you are of a certain age, perhaps your man is Bob Cousy, whose final season was in '63. Or maybe it's John Havlicek, whose FIRST season was '63, which links him up with Dave Cowens, who broke in with the 1970-71 Celtics. And, of course, Cowens played one season with Larry Bird, who played with Dee Brown, who played with Antoine Walker, who played with Paul Pierce, and, well, there you are. Cowens, Brown and Walker never played in a Celtics-Lakers NBA Finals, but the point is made: It doesn't take much work to connect THESE Celtics with THOSE Celtics.

You will hear a lot of this kind of talk between now and Game 1 on Thursday night. Everyone, everywhere, will be building bridges that connect today with yesterday, that connect today's Celtics and Lakers with yesterday's Celtics and Lakers.

And once you get across that bridge to yesterday - to the yesterdays of the 1960s - be sure to thank those guys for what they did.

They didn't create the NBA, but they grabbed us by our collective throats and made us pay attention to it.