Dear KG and Jesus, about our rivalry with the Lakers…

I understand each of you probably joined our franchise with some of your own personal history with the purple. This is good. It will help get you in tune with the depth of our emotions.

My guess is that you also are familiar with the Celtics-Lakers rivalry of the 1980s. At different times, both of you have expressed a desire to make the new Garden a house of pain to opponents like the old Garden was in the past. This is good, too. It suggests that you understand the history underlying the franchise, and the Celtics franchise is nothing if not historical.

But please allow me to elaborate.

Let me begin with a brief overview.

Celtics fans hate the Lakers.

Pure and simple.

Every time the two teams play, the game represents a Battle for the Ages.

It started in 1960s when the Celtics played the Lakers for an NBA championship six times in eight years. Each time, the Celtics walked away with the bling. The Celtic family was proud of it's dominance, and the Lakers developed self-esteem issues, including an inferiority complex.

In short, we got in their heads.

In the 1980s the Celtics and Lakers renewed the rivalry, with the 1984 Finals presenting the battleground.

The Lakers opened the series with a 115-109 victory at the Boston Garden. In Game 2, the Lakers led 115-113 with 18 seconds left when Gerald Henderson stole a James Worthy pass to score a game tying layup. The Celtics went on to prevail in overtime, 124-121. In Game 3, the Lakers raced to an easy 137-104 victory as Magic Johnson dished out 21 assists.

After the game, Larry Bird said the Celtics played like "sissies," a clear attempt to light a fire under his teammates. Kevin McHale responded by clotheslining Kurt Rambis in Game 4, which the Celtics won in overtime. Before the game ended, James Worthy missed a key free throw that would have tied the game. Cornbread Maxwell got Worthy’s attention after the miss, and clutched his throat telling Worthy the Lakers were choking again.

The Celtics eventually won the championship, capturing games 5 and 7 at the fabled Boston Garden, which had no air-conditioning.

Pat Riley later blamed the series loss on the lack of air-conditioning, even though neither the Home nor Vistors locker room was so equipped.

In 1985 the Lakers finally managed to exorcise the ghosts that had been haunting them, winning the championship game on the parquet floor in Boston, 4 games to 2.

The first words spoken by Pat Riley after the win were “now they can’t mock us anymore.”

No one asked who "they" were.

The 1985 offseason began when Bill Walton called Jerry West, telling him that he wanted to play for the Lakers. “No thanks, Bill, I’ve seen your X-rays,” West said, referring to the 21 foot and ankle operations Mountain Man had undergone over the last 10 years.

Walton next called Red Auerbach, who, after consulting with Bird, brought Walton on board for the following season. The 1985-86 Celtics team is still considered by many observers to be the greatest basketball team of all time. On their way to 67 regular season wins, the Celtics crushed the Lakers twice, Walton playing a definitive role in both games.

The Lakers lost in 5 games to the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference Finals, depriving the Celtics of the pleasure of beating the purple to win their 16th championship. At the time, several pundits opined that the Lakers had not given their best effort against the Rockets, knowing that humiliation at the hands of the Celtics awaited them in the Finals.

The 1986 offseason opened with a war of words. Walton reminded everyone that he gave the Lakers the first chance at signing him, while Laker guard Byron Scott responded by saying “Dr. Scholl (Walton) needs to spend more time worrying about his feet and less time worrying about the Lakers.”

As it turned out, Walton injured his foot while riding a stationary bike in August, which began a series of foot and ankle injuries that ended his career. Meanwhile, the Lakers acquired Mychal Thompson for basically nothing, and with the added depth the purple went on to win two more titles, but not before Kevin McHale, Larry Bird, and Robert Parish attempted to defend their 1986 championship, each one playing with a serious injury, McHale with a broken foot.

But this was not the end of the Celtics-Lakers rivalry, nor the end of McHale’s role in it.

The Lakers spent most of the last 4 years offering just about anything and everything trying to and Kevin Garnett. This last summer Magic Johnson conceded that he thought they had "nabbed" The Ticket on two different occasions. When McHale traded him to Boston, Celtic fans were immediately reminded of what McHale said when he earlier had refused to trade Gugliotta to the Lakers.

“Believe it or not,” McHale said, “my job is not to hang more banners in Los Angeles.”

And this gets to the heart of the Celtics-Lakers rivalry.

The score right now is 16-14, Celtics.

After the Celtics last championship, the score was 16-9. Needless to say, the last five Laker championships have made us a little uncomfortable.

So we need you to treat tonight's game the same way the Celtics did during the 1985-86 season:

As the best vehicle for sending a message on the state of the health of the franchise.

We trust you'll do just that.

KG's Impact on Celtic-Laker Big Man Debate

The Lakers are a proud franchise. In moments of personal strength (and Laker demise), I will acknowledge that the Lakers have an impressive legacy. Part of that legacy is a history of dominant centers, starting with George Mikan and ending with Kwame Brown. Just kidding. Mikan, Wilt, Kareem, and Shaq are a pretty impressive quartet. In fact, it could easily be argued that each of those four were the best centers of their eras (arguable, not indisputable).

The Boston Celtics, of course, have their own storied legacy, one that includes a number of talented and dominant centers. Russell typically had the better of Wilt, and won more titles than Wilt and Mikan combined. Kareem won six titles over a period in which Cowens and Parish also won six (though Parish didn’t play a key role in winning his fourth title with the Bulls). And, of course, Shaq won more titles than Vin Baker and Mark Blount (NOTE: It doesn’t really change the math if we exclude the title Kareem won with the Bucks, the title Parish won with the Bulls, or the title Shaq won with the Heat.).

Speaking of math, if we alter the equation just a tad, by evaluating dominant Big Men instead of dominant centers, our perspective seems to change as well. Throw in Bird, McHale, and Walton for the Celtics, and the question becomes what do the Lakers have to offer up of similar stature? Bob McAdoo and Mychal Thompson aren’t Hall of Famers. In fact, I struggle to find any power forward in Laker history who has taken up permanent residence in Springfield, MA. Keep in mind, too, that I am omitting a number of power-forward candidates from the great Celtics teams of the 1960s (just to be charitable to our friends in the Purple, who are currently down on their luck).

The problem with trying to objectively compare Russell, Cowens, Parish, Bird, McHale, and Walton to Mikan, Wilt, Kareem, and Shaq is that Parish, Bird, McHale, and Walton are all from the same era. So any attempt to compare total championships won would be misleading because the titles won by four of the Celtics overlap. Nonetheless, all twelve players are among the 50 Greatest of All Time, and seven of them wore GREEN. Walton only played one full season with the Cs, while Wilt played several for the Ls, but won only one title. On and on, back and forth. You say thrust, I say parry.

Now we see why the internecine fight over Kevin Garnett was so bloody. We are at a tipping point in NBA history. The Celtics have 16 titles, the Lakers 14. Red and Phil are tied. The Lakers have a richer history of centers, the Celtics have a richer history of big men. Not much separates the two teams, and had the Ls landed Garnett, well, I can barely muster up the courage to contemplate the depths of my despair.

Let me put it another way. If the KG press conference represented the happiest moment of my Celtic fanhood since 1986, then the Kobe-forced trade of Shaquille O'Neal was a close second. Everyone in Celticland celebrated the trade. The nightmarish run was finally over. No more 24/7 Lakers. The networks would no longer combine to broadcast 75 regular season Laker games a year, and, even if they did, that would be ok, too, as we all enjoy watching a good Purple drubbing now and again.

After Danny landed the Big Fella, Magic Johnson admitted that the Lakers had been pursuing Garnett for as long as he could remember, convinced on at least two occasions they had finally nabbed him. Laker fans, of course, jumped the gun in announcing KG’s arrival in LaLa Land as early as Spring of 2006. These fans believed they were entitled to The Ticket as part of some divinely orchestrated plan by which every era’s best big man winds up wearing the Purple. In other words, it was from Orders on High that KG would carry the torch passed by Shaq.

Whether you believe that the Celtics won the KG sweepstakes because (1) the cards were stacked in their favor (http://lexnihilnovi.blogspot.com/2007/10/mountain-man-mchale-and-kg-trade.html); (2) Red intervened from the next world; or (3) Danny’s brilliance in stockpiling poker chips finally paid off, the end result is the same: the Boston Celtics landed one of the game’s premier big men, a player whom if he wins one title will earn a place at the table with the Pantheon of all-time great Celtic and Laker Bigs. If he wins more than one title, he will move the Celtic-Laker big man debate decidedly in Boston’s favor, not to mention adding some breathing room on the banner tally.

Mountain Man, McHale, and the KG Trade

It is hard to imagine that there are still doubters out there. But they remain. To be sure, Kevin McHale tells the public it was pure coincidence that The Big Ticket landed in Beantown, instead of, say, Los Angeles, playing for Phil Jackson, or in New York, working for Isaiah Thomas. McHale, of course, has a history of being brutally honest, when a little less candor might have been warranted. He didn’t earn a reputation as one of the league’s best interviews for nothing.

But, for the sake of argument, let’s recap.

Kevin McHale might be the greatest power forward ever to lace them up and run down a basketball court. Every type of defense was thrown at him, and McHale had an answer for them all. Laker fans like to think Mychal Thompson provided an antidote to the Black Hole. But, in fact, Thompson was just another victim of the Torture Chamber.

Lest your memory play tricks on you this Halloween, go back and watch video of the 1987 NBA Finals. It’s available on youtube. McHale was fabulous, as always, and close to unstoppable. The only things that stood in his way of scoring 30 every game on 12-12 shooting was the fact that (1) McHale was mortal; and (2) he was playing on a broken foot. Yes, that is right. Despite being just off his game by a fraction here and there, McHale played through the entire series with an injury that would leave him with a permanent limp.

Oh, and did I mention that the name on the front of his jersey for more than 10 years of his Hall of Fame career read “Celtics”? McHale’s #32 was retired by the hallowed GREEN and hoisted to the rafters with the rest of the Celtic dignitaries. As part of that heritage, McHale added new chapters to the Celtics-Lakers rivalry. Many contend it was never more heated than it was in the mid-1980s.

A few highlights.

In 1984 the Lakers looked poised to end their run of Finals futility against the Celtics, when a Kevin McHale clothesline helped turn the series around and send the Lakers to defeat again. A year later, when the Lakers finally won a playoff series against the Cs, the first words out of Pat Riley’s mouth were “Now they can’t mock us anymore.” No one had to ask who “they” were. Everyone knew. The year after that, Red Auerbach had assembled the greatest team in NBA history. The 1986 Celtics had one noteworthy flaw: mental lapses that resulted from boredom. Every fan of that team remembers the losses to New Jersey in the second game of the season and to New York on Christmas day. In both games the Celtics lost leads of more than 20 points. In the 1986 Finals, the Cs lost twice to a Houston team that would probably have been swept had the Celtics attention not been diverted by the Sampson-Sichting Heavyweight v. Cruiserweight bout.

One team the Celtics never lost focus against were the Lakers. The two teams played each other four times in the pre-season alone, getting into fights during three of the games. The Celtics played the Purple twice during the regular season that year. Going into the home game in January, the Purple somehow managed to own a better record than the Green. By the end of the game, however, there was no doubt who was the better team. The Celtics won 110-95, amassing a 25 point lead in the fourth quarter. A few weeks later the two teams played again in the Forum, this time sans McHale, and the Celtics repeated their demolition-ball act.

After the second game, both Magic Johnson and Kareem conceded that the Lakers were no match. What they didn’t say was that the season was over for the Purple after that game. The Lakers never recovered, putting in a halfhearted effort the rest of the season, an effort that ended in a 4-1 Western Conference Finals defeat at the hands of a team Vegas handicapped as a prohibitive underdog.

What happened?

No one ever said publicly. But there were all sorts of hints, rumors, and innuendos. The Lakers could not face humiliation in the Finals, and so they chose defeat in the WCFs rather than get swept by the GREEN. Unrealistic, you say? The Celtics were playing at the top of their game. Walton owned Kareem in the two regular season games, holding Kareem to 3-14 from the field. DJ neutralized Magic. The Lakers two biggest stars were rendered hapless. Would the Cs have suffered a mental lapse, perhaps? Not against the team they hated this much.

Which (finally!) brings me to the subject of this post.

When Tom Gugliotta was a healthy and productive member of the Timberwolves, Jerry West and the Lakers were offering everything and anything (other than Kobe and Shaq) to acquire him. After six weeks of trade talks, the Minnesota media asked McHale why he wouldn’t pull the trigger on a deal with the Ls. “Believe it or not,” McHale said, “my job is not to help the Lakers win more titles.”

What an interesting choice of words, Kevin. Any Celtic or Laker fan today knows that the Celtics have 16 NBA titles while the Lakers have 14. The Lakers have won 5 titles since the Celtics last won number 16 and three titles since McHale retired. In other words, the Lakers are getting a little too close for comfort. Under no circumstances would McHale trade Tom Gugliotta to the Lakers. I repeat Tom Gugliotta. Since when did he become the latest incarnation of Karl Malone? Regardless of what you think of Googs, no one has any doubts about the stature of The Ticket.

MVP in 2004 with a decent supporting cast, Garnett spent the last three years waiting for McHale to get him more help. Problem was the roster actually got worse, and Garnett and his immense talent were left languishing on a lottery team.

Enter Danny Ainge. Walton was McHale’s alter-ego, and make no mistake, the two had their own private celebration at mid-court after the last title was in the bag (see picture above). But it was Ainge who was and remains McHale’s best friend. Ainge had been working McHale for Garnett over the last two seasons. Garnett didn’t want to go to Boston in June? No problem, McHale told Ainge. Just go about your business and we’ll try again later. Ainge acquires Ray Allen on draft day, and, you know what? McHale and Ainge did resume talks. This time, KG saw the light and McHale and Ainge got the deal done.

Phil Jackson’s response?

“I guess we didn’t have the right pedigree.”

My response?

Wow. Now there's some brutal honesty. If the Timberwolves weren't going to win a championship with KG, then there was really only one place he was gonna go--McHale's Boston Celtics. In other words, the next best thing to happen in the World According to Kevin McHale was if the Wolves can't win a title, then we better see if we can do something to help McHale's other team win number 17 and create a little breathing room between the GREEN and the purple.

It wasn't long before GMs from around the league were echoing Phil Jackson's sentiments. McHale never said so. But what did you expect? He already lost 3 first rounders for suffering from loose lips in the awful Joe Smith deal.

So when the Celtics hoist up the next banner (and the banner after that), I don't expect McHale to be invited. But I sure hope Danny arranges for a closed-circuit viewing where Ainge, Bird, McHale, and KG (and Walton, the last great #5) can hold up their glasses to celebrate the achievement.