Re: 11 verses 16

[Joe Hironaka <j.hironaka@unesco.org>]

Mark Estepp wrote:

> Something hit me this weekend that really put me in a real funk.
>
> The C's have 16 championship, and the Lakers have 11, and are on the verge
> of #12.
>
> With the current weakness throughout the league, and if the Lakers can keep
> Kobe and Shack together, they could make a run at the 16 championships.
>
> Can you imagine?!?  The Lakers with more championships that the Celtics?
>
> Augh!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Hi Mark and Doug:
    As a fellow Celts fan, I urge you to forget about the 16-11 situation
(which includes the Fakers' five Minnesota-era championships sometime back in
the Pleistocene era), and contemplate the accurate tally  as 8-2 (an .800
winning percentage for Boston). To wit:

1959 - Boston completes the NBA's first "El Sweepo" in Final's history.
Russell, Cousy, Sharmon and friends entered the series with an amazing 18 game
winning streak against the Fakers, which they stretched here to 22 with the
sweep of four very close games.

1962 - The Fakers built solid and (potentially) demoralizing 2-1 and 3-2 leads
in the series, thanks first to a dramatc last second steal and layup by Jerry
West in Game 3 and then a 61-point outburst by Elgin Baylor to blow open Game 5
for the Fakers. Facing tough odds, the Boston Celtics team flew out to La La
Land for a clutch Game 6 triumph, then returned to the Boston Garden to
complete the comeback in an exhausting OT win.

1963 - After dropping Game 5 as a result of Elgin Baylor's 43 points, the
Celtics team went back on the road to turn the series momentum around by
clinching in La La Land 112-109 for their fifth consecutive title.

1965 - Despite an awesome 40.6 ppg series effort by Jerry West, the Celtics
delivered endless and painful cans of whup-ass on the Fakers over five games.
Boston romped in the series opener by 33 points and took the series clincher by
34 points.

1966 - One of the great seesaw 7-game championship series ended with victory
cigars all around in Red Auerbach's final year as the greatest basketball coach
in history. The Celtics had to win twice in LA on the way to a 95-93 triumph in
Game 7 behind the "refuse-to-lose" 25 points and 32 rebounds from Bill Russell
in the decisive game.

1968 - In Game 5, the Celtics took a 3-2 edge in a 121-117 overtime triumph
behind Hondo's 31 points. In the following game,  the aging Celtics (led by
Russell) wrapped it up with a dominant 25-point win that sent the Fakers home
crying and wimpering like the fruits they actually are.

1969 - The even-more aging, proud Celtics shocked the regular-season champion
and "Dream Team" Fakers one more time in 7 games, this time after falling
behind 3-2 in a humiliating blowout Game 5 loss with monster performances from
Baylor, Chamberlain and West. Bill Russell -who would of course retire after
this series- badly needed to outplay Wilt Chamberlain two games in a row to
give his team any chance. And so he did, thereby leading the otherwise
overmatched Celtics to triumph.

1984 -The Big Three ruled the backboards, 52-33, and won the Game 7 clincher,
111-102, despite making only 39.5 percent of their shots (34 of 86).  During
the series, the Celtics made 44.2 percent of their shots while the Fakers
established a championship series record by making 51.4 percent. Despite being
outrebounded by 19 in the infamous Game 3 blowout loss, the Celtics had an
overall 31-rebound advantage over James Un-worthy and company. Remarked the
"Greasy One" Pat Riley: "That's the difference, because rebounding is desire.
They don't have the same kind of talent we have. blah blah whine whine"  After
the series, Larry Bird admitted: "To be honest, they should have swept. It was
virtually over after that game (Game 3) when they crushed us."

1985 - This time Bird had bone chips in his right elbow and had jammed his
right index finger in the Eastern Conference finals. During the last two games
of the conference finals, he shot 10 of 33 (30.3 percent) from the field.
During the first five games of the championship series, Bird was 41 of 89 (46.1
percent) and averaged just 23 points and 8.6 rebounds. Over the regular season,
he had averaged 28.7 points and 10.5 rebounds while shooting 52.2 percent from
the field. The Lakers triumphed in Game 6 despite a last-ditch combined 60
points from Bird and McHale. "This is the start of Laker mystique," exclaimed
Riley, dripping with grease. "We broke the dynasty. The mystique, the con and
the deception. When we get our championship rings, we're going to have a
diamond set on a parquet floor."

1987 - Boston's Kevin McHale and Bill Walton entered the Finals each with a
broken bone in their feet. Scott Wedman had a heel injury and did not play in
the series. Robert Parish had a badly sprained left ankle. Danny Ainge had a
sore right knee and an injured finger on his shooting hand. These injuries
helped allow both Milwaukee and Detroit ("Bird stole the ball") to extend their
series to seven games against us. After two straight Fakers romps in Game 1 and
2 plus a nine-point deficit in the first quarter of Game 3, Larry Legend and
Magic slugged it out in two of the great superstar showdowns in Game 3 and 4 (a
1-1 draw). Before Game 5 in Boston Garden, Bird addressed his teammates:
"They're going to celebrate, but let's not let them celebrate on the parquet!"
All five Celtics starters scored at least 21 points in that 15-point rout,
arguably the last great game of the Bird era. The Flakers handily won the next
game at the Forum, then went to Spago's for alfalfa pasta with their agents,
astrologists and breast-implanted girlfriends etc.

    I got the above histories mostly verbatim from the TSN sports vault. :-)
Now I personally will admit that the way Kobe Bryant has been playing sometimes
it almost seems the Fakers have both a Michael Jordan and a Wilt Chamberlain on
the same team for the next decade. Scary thought, but they are still the Fakers
and you can already see signs of the basic wussiness and foolhardy smugness of
the team this year. When we're eventually good enough to greet them again in
the finals, I hope and trust we will deliver serious cans of East Coast
whup-ass and prevail behind the big-game MVP play of the unguardable and
finally mature triple-double forward Antoine Walker. History is pretty clearly
on our side.

Joe

p.s. Apologies are due to Douglas, John Lyell etc for bashing La La Land
(mostly in jest). It's really great to know Boston fans live out there.

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