Bleachers' Brew #112 Green Day

(This appears in my June 16, 2008 column in the sports section of the Business Mirror.)

Green Day
by rick olivares

If Paul Revere were alive today, prior to the start of the NBA Finals, he no doubt would have driven from Boston’s North End all the way to the town of Lexington, shouting, “The Lakers are coming! The Lakers are coming!”

The Boston Celtics, the once and future kings of the National Basketball Association, after more than two decades of unfulfilled dreams, are back in a grand way. And what better match up to reaffirm their birthright than to win at the expense of the one and only team from Los Angeles that has supplanted them as the league’s preeminent franchise.

In truth, Boston’s downfall began in 1985 where despite their Game 1 Memorial Day Massacre of their long-suffering nemesis Los Angeles, the Lakers found their verve and beat the Celtics in six games. “They can no longer mock us,” cried then-LA coach Pat Riley after that historic championship.

Jerry Buss, the real estate magnate who bought the franchise from Jack Kent Cooke in 1979, basked in the knowledge that he was the first Lakers owner to prevent the lighting of Red Auerbach’s victory stoogie as well as the first one to win a title-clinching game on the Celtics’ fabled parquet.

It was more than the Lakers’ first finals win over their arch-nemesis in nine tries. They had gotten the proverbial monkey off their back and they would repeat the feat two years later to cement their place as the team of the 80’s and the NBA’s new dynasty after Bill Russell rode off into the history books as the ultimate winner.

In the aftermath of Boston’s slide into mediocrity, Los Angeles emerged as the class of the NBA. In Magic Johnson’s 13 years in purple and gold, the Lakers went to the NBA Finals nine times and romped away with five titles. Johnson’s premature retirement due to contracting the HIV virus saw LA’s own slide in the 1990’s, but the team kicked off the new millennium with a three-peat of their own and nearly won a fourth before a new team was built around Kobe Bryant. And as a testament to the professionalism of their organization, the Lakers (aside from the Phoenix Suns) have become the favored destination of many pro ballers.

Boston is one of those proud cities with successful teams whose feats are a part of local folklore if not sports history. Unfortunately, aside from the Celtics, Doug Flutie’s Hail Mary Pass to Gerald Phelan in 1984 that enabled Boston College to beat the University of Miami, and Bobby Orr’s two Stanley Cups with the Bruins, Beantown’s underachieving teams for the longest time were romanticized in prose and song as loveable losers or ultimate underdogs. They were self-effacing “idiots” who although they never brought glory to Mudville, were remembered as heroes who kept the faith.

But the worm has turned and there is most certainly joy in Mudville. Call them now ahem… “Title Town.”

The Red Sox shrugged off the Curse of the Bambino (and Dan Shaugnessy) to win two World Series titles after going winless in 86 years. And they did so in spectacular fashion after crushing the hearts of their ancient rivals the New York Yankees who are now in their own deep funk.

The New England Patriots, hitherto known as the patsies of the Chicago Bears in Super Bowl XX, have won to date three titles and become one of the most feared teams in the NFL (Spygate notwithstanding).

Speaking of American Football, the NBA was the victim of an end zone TD of different kind… Tim Donaghy. After more than two decades of being the toast and model of American and international professional sports leagues, the NBA was beset with a new generation of malcontents who aside from making outrageous sums of money even before they played a minute of pro ball neither knew nor cared about the league’s heritage and history. There was an increase of on-court violence that people weren’t sure if they were watching pro basketball or the NHL. And with the invasion of cyberspace and newsprint of conspiracy theories, the last thing the NBA needed was a dagger into its integrity.

The Celtics, in all this time, hung their fabled 16^th banner in 1986, lost to the Lakers in ’87 Finals, and made one more serious challenge in 1991 before tumbling into the nether regions of the Draft Lottery.

When General Manager Danny Ainge sought to replicate the Big Three of his era by adding Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett to their lone All-Star in Paul Pierce, Boston went somewhere fast. The troika even before they played an NBA minute together were pegged as title favorites.

Enter Memphis Grizzlies General Manager, Chris Wallace, who was Ainge’s predecessor in Boston. Wallace, in a mid-season trade with Los Angeles, sent Pau Gasol to the Lakers, who were floundering after an injury to center Andrew Bynum who was in the midst of a breakout of a season. And with every passing week, it seemed like a return to glory days of the 1980’s when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson elevated the NBA from its drug-addled past onto a whole new level.

The Celts couldn’t be more pleased. If this was going to be a return to glory, then who best to beat than the Lakers. And just as it was in the 80’s, the Celtics have somewhat reversed their own curse.

After 1986, it was pretty clear that Boston was about to be overtaken by younger and hungrier teams in the East like Cleveland, Chicago, and Detroit. More so with the Pistons who were seriously knocking on Heaven’s door. But thanks to the greatest heist in Boston since the Brinks job in 1950 when Bird pilfered Isiah Thomas’ lazy inbounds pass to Bill Laimbeer that he immediately shoveled to a cutting Dennis Johnson for the back-breaking win in the 1987 Eastern Finals, the Celtics were able to stave off the young Turks.

But the Pistons learned from that failed campaign and came back to bedevil the Celtics and put a disappointing end to the careers of Larry Bird and Kevin McHale. And in this age of Western Conference dominance, Detroit has for the last five years running been the one force in the East capable of dethroning the kings of the West.

If the success of the Pistons of the 80’s against Boston saw the team make wholesale changes (the team went with the youth movement of Reggie Lewis, Brian Shaw, Kevin Gamble, Rick Fox, and Dee Brown) and bid goodbye to crucial pieces of their championship years in Ainge who was traded to the Sacramento Kings for Joe Kleine and to Dennis Johnson and Bill Walton who both retired.

Flash forward to 2008, and the new jack veteran-heavy Celtics pretty much ended an era in Motown by sending the Pistons home for the summer with a 4-2 Eastern Finals win that has shook the franchise. Coach Flip Saunders was fired. And the core of their 2004 title squad – Rip Hamilton, Rasheed Wallace, Tayshaun Prince, and Chauncey Billups – are said to be on the trading block.

And these Celtics are turning conventional basketball wisdom on its rear end.

The much-maligned Doc Rivers has actually outcoached the Master himself Phil Jackson. The ghost of Red Auerbach and Celtics past seemingly refuse to see the Lakers’ Hall-of-Fame coach surpass the late-Boston patriarch’s total number of titles. Ray Allen, the subject of numerous treatises on how shooting guards who see a rapid decrease in their game once they hit the age of 32, has clearly been the team’s most consistent player in the Finals. Rajon Rondo, he of the sublime skills, has shown critics everywhere why he was kept in favor of Delonte West who was shipped out. And Leon Powe, James Posey, and Eddie House, for the most part forgotten by Rivers, have been superb firemen responding to the foul trouble that has plagued Boston’s starters and in the process make their coach look like a jenius. We’re spelling it with a “j” because the jury is still out on Rivers’ chops. Pierce reached deep into NBA history and pulled a Willis Reed and has thus far outplayed Kobe Bryant. And Garnett… has played like Kevin Garnett.

Los Angeles may have the league’s Most Valuable Player, but Boston, these once down-trodden Celtics after being pushed to the limit by the Atlanta Hawks and the Cleveland Cavaliers, have been labeled as underdogs, clearly have the best team.

You can actually imagine Paul Revere riding once more and crying out, “They can no longer mock us!”