Blog Posts For Tag: Celtics

The NBA has an obsession with the number three. The ultimate expression of dominance in this new era of basketball is the three-peat. Every team must have a three point specialist to space the floor in this age of unimaginably tall basketball players at every position. And now the rule of three is being applied to the championship equation.

The 2010 NBA Finals (and yes, I am preemptively giving the Western Conference Finals to LA.) is neither a rematch of the Celtics and Lakers from the 2008 season nor a series between the 2008 NBA Champion Boston Celtics and the 2009 NBA Champion Los Angeles Lakers. This may seem perfectly obvious to many, but pundits are sure to compare a Celtics team with a healthy Garnett to the championship team two years ago and a Lakers team with a healthy Andrew Bynum to the championship team from last season. This could conveniently by billed as a battle between the optimal incarnation of both storied franchises in the 21st century, especially as the NBA tries to steal attention from the LeBron watch.

The NBA Finals has been set since it became evident Kevin Garnett was not coming back to Boston this postseason. It is all but a foregone conclusion that it will be the Los Angeles Lakers and the Cleveland Cavaliers - the deadly assassin versus the newly anointed king, the perennial champions from the land of the sun and stars versus the have-nots from America’s rust belt. Still there are 14 other teams in the playoffs, and there must be some meaning in their postseason participation besides avoiding a lottery pick in one of the worst drafts in the last decade. So, this begs the question, what are they really playing for?

Whenever anybody thinks of the NBA and can’t miss games, the same match up comes up, the game between the purple and gold Los Angeles Lakers and the green and white Boston Celtics. This is perhaps the only nationally recognized rivalry in basketball, which is odd considering that the NBA has been around since the 1940s (which is also why everyone was so excited about last year’s finals). However, if you live near a city lucky enough to have one of these professional basketball teams you know that there are plenty of regional rivalries that have as much passion or are revving up to be as intense as the ultimate East Coast-West Coast showdown.

Invariably, any basketball postseason experience, whether you are watching an NBA game or any of the contests on the slate during March Madness, will have a game that will come down to the final minutes and a four or five point deficit. It is moments like these, after years of watching painful finishes, that have made me despise announcers who feel required to say that the team trying to claw into the lead does not need to go for three.

With a little more than 20 games left to go before the NBA regular season is over it is time to take a look at the stories that are sure to dominate the speculative headlines, features, and blogs.

This weekend was one of extremes. It started with a Sports Illustrated expose that implicated New York Yankees Alex Rodriguez as one of 104 people who tested positive for performance enhancing drugs (PEDs) and ended with an NBA match up between two of the best basketball players in a game that did not disappoint.

There is something about the fall of an institution or a person that is bigger than life that elicits such strong emotions. There is never any middle ground. It is always a reveling in an almost tyrannical vindictive showcase of fire and brimstone or an intense lament complete with blind nostalgic prose. If the documents released in the Barry Bonds perjury case are even slightly damning then I would be prepared to grab a pitchfork and join the other villagers in a mad riot on the way down to the steroid laced steel gate of his mansion.

It seems like the winter wasteland that blankets the top half of this country is so intense that few things can bring a solid group of sports fans together. There is the Super Bowl, which is on February 1st this year, but little else seems to excite a nation that lives to love sports.

Twenty-three. Yes, twenty three. I am not chanting Michael Jordan’s old number, but counting the number of three-point shots made by the Orlando Magic Tuesday night against the Sacramento Kings. The Magic hit 23 of 37 shots from beyond the arc to set an NBA record for the most triples made by a team in a single game. They were hitting shots from all over the place and nine players helped the Magic capture the record even after garbage time had started in the fourth quarter.

The Boston Celtics started 27-2 and looked like they were going to be the team to beat the Chicago Bulls historic 72-10 season in 1995-96. The season looked like one long holiday, but Christmas Day began with coal in their stockings and by New Years Eve it looked like Boston would have to make a resolution to play better defense.

So I am simply obsessed with ESPN and the NBA, and that adoration is tied into one blinding vision that ties the two into one. I am like a giddy little girl who just found out daddy sprung for Jonas Brothers tickets. Really, I think “Mayne Street” is genius. The offbeat humor is enough to make me want to buy his book, even if the show is shameless self-promotion for his book An Incomplete and Inaccurate History of Sport.

The real question is not who is better, the 23-2 Boston Celtics or the 20-3 Los Angeles Lakers. The real question is can any team in either conference actually stop these teams in a seven game series?

It is no secret that geek chic has taken over. Shows like Chuck and sassy smart girls in glasses are all the rage. It is also no mystery that the ‘80s are back. Excess is king, Madonna is back on tour, and the Celtics have played the Lakers in the finals.

The Holiday Season is about to begin, my dad has already reported that the enclosure has been set up in my uncle’s backyard and three-plus cases of beer have been purchased to celebrate the best day of all, Turkey Day.

The NBA has started a new golden age. Those words have been said before. They were said when Tracy McGrady, Vince Carter, and Allen Iverson and this last batch of superstars were supposed to replace Jordan from the ‘90s.