Spirit of 1986

June 2008

Spirit of 1986

For those of you out of touch for a couple of days and wondering just how long it's been since the last time the Celtics won an NBA championship, look at it from this perspective: Big Baby was a little baby.



``Just a few months old, I guess,'' Glen ``Big Baby'' Davis was saying late yesterday afternoon, following the Celts' first practice for Game 1 of the NBA Finals against You Know Who on Thursday night at the Garden. ``When they were doing all that celebrating, I was down in Baton Rouge, probably chillin' with a milk bottle.''

Davis was born on Jan. 1, 1986. It was five months and seven days later, on June 8, 1986, that the Celtics emerged with a 114-97 Game 6 victory over the Houston Rockets to win their 16th and, to date, last NBA championship.

``Not as a player, but just being a basketball fan, I've heard a lot of the stories about '86,'' said Davis. ``I've heard about the tradition, the games, the players. I know how important all that is.''

But on the list of Celtics players who were born in 1986, Big Baby is actually an old man. Rajon Rondo, who was born Feb. 22, 1986, was three months, 17 days old. And Gabe Pruitt, born on April 19, 1986, in the midst of the Celtics' three-game sweep of the Chicago Bulls in the opening round of the 1985-86 playoffs, was just two months, 20 days old the night the late, great Red Auerbach lit up his last championship cigar.

During a week in which everyone is waxing nostalgic about where they were and what they were doing the last time the Celtics won a championship, these three guys bring a unique perspective to the discussion. With Davis, Rondo and Pruitt, there is no talk of how they had fewer pounds and more hair back in those days, no talk about how, yeah, sure, watching those games helped nurture their own dreams to play in the NBA one day.

There are seven current members of the Celtics who remember watching the Celts in the 1980s. Just the other night, as disgruntled Pistons fans were making way for the parking lot at The Palace of Auburn Hills, captain Paul Pierce talked about being a kid in Los Angeles, rooting for his beloved Lakers against the hated Celtics in the '87 NBA Finals.

Kevin Garnett talked about sitting so close to the television during the games that his mother fed him the age-old warning about ruining his eyes. Just yesterday, Ray Allen shared HIS memories of watching the original Big Three.

Not Glen Davis. Not Gabe Pruitt. Not Rajon Rondo. These guys are our reminder that there is an entire generation of Boston sports fans with absolutely no idea what it means for the Celtics to win a championship.

``I think it's quite a thing to have three guys on our team who were born in '86 while we're on our championship run,'' said Pruitt. ``Thinking about it now, I think it's great that I was born just in time to have been around for that. I'm here learning, like all the young guys, and it's amazing that I was this little baby when we won it in '86.

``My grandmother still lives in the same house on Gage and Normandie in Los Angeles she was living in when I was born,'' Pruitt said. ``And she's a huge, and I mean huge, Lakers fan. I was living right next door. I don't know if she watched the Finals in '86, but I know she was watching that game in '87 when the Lakers beat the Celtics in the Finals. That's a fact.''

Is it possible, then, that when the Lakers beat the Celtics in the Finals in '87, she might have been babysitting a year-old Gabe Pruitt?

``Very possible,'' he said. ``She was always babysitting me, and she never missed a Lakers game. I might have been right there with her.''

The lesson here? Beginning Thursday night, give the little ones their milk and then prop them up in front of the flat screen. That way, years from now you'll be able to tell 'em they were part of all this.