Raised on the glory of the Celtics dynasty, I boast a prominent green gene somewhere in my sports soul. So while my mind and heart can feast on wonderful and wondrous images—Roberts stealing second base, Big Papi going deep, Brady fading back to pass, Vinatieri lining up a kick—I, on occasion, have been waking up in the dark of the night in a cold sweat. And all I could see was Antoine Walker, he of the infamous butt wiggle, hosting another ill-advised three-pointer and, of course, clanging it.
How the Celtics got from Antoine's ignominy to Kevin Garnett, on the fabled parquet floor, channeling his inner James Cagney and bellowing "Top of the world, Ma!" is one of the most improbable sports odysseys in a city that has come to specialize in them. The Celtics' brain trust had an entirely different plan for this season. The team tanked the last one to put itself in the best position to draft one of two coveted rookies, Greg Oden and Kevin Durant, around which a team, perhaps even a championship team someday, could be built. It was the same plan that had failed more than a decade earlier, when the prize was Tim Duncan—and once again the Ping-Pong balls came up snake eyes, or whatever Ping-Pong balls do when your dream craps out.
Thus was born the Big Three—the wheeling and dealing that teamed two perennial all-stars with the petulant Pierce. And looking back now from the perspective of the team's 17th championship, after its total dismantling of the favored Lakers, it's easy to forget that many of us considered it a dubious proposition. We saw a playoff team, no doubt—and one that, given the drought, might be enough to satisfy our basketball itch. But was it an aggregate with championship mettle. Both Garnett and Allen were on the wrong side of 30. Garnett was certainly NBA royalty, a ferocious rebounder and defender, but he was not regarded as a climb-on-my-back superstar in the Larry Bird or Magic Johnson mold. Allen was viewed as a one-dimensional player, a sensational shooter in the mold of Reggie Miller, but without Miller's resume of big-game heroics. Indeed one would have to scour Allen's career, if you don't count his University of Connecticut days, to see if he had ever played in what could be termed a big game. Even if Garnett and Allen proved to be all one could hope, waiting for them in Boston was Pierce, a mercurial star in the "me first" mold whose attitude was viewed by many as suspect—toxic enough at times that he became the designated fall guy at the 2002 world basketball championships in Indianapolis, when the United States finished a mortifying sixth.
Don't let anybody tell you they saw what was coming. About the best anyone envisioned was a playoff berth and, in the weaker Eastern Conference, a chance to sneak into the Finals against some Western Conference powerhouse. And believe me, we Celtics fans would have been delighted to settle for that. Even though the regular season proved to be so much better than anyone could imagine—a league-leading 66 wins, the NBA's best road record, the NBA's best defense, a 2-0 sweep of the Lakers in the regular season, a stunning Texas sweep of San Antonio, Dallas and Houston—nobody was ready to crown this Celtics team.
And rightfully so, if the early playoff rounds were any indication. The woeful, sub-.500 Atlanta Hawks looked too fast and too athletic for the Celtics, pushing Boston to seven games. LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers were too big and strong and again the Celtics had to rely on home-court advantage in a seventh game. Some of the potential flaws, considered long ago and discarded, now resurrected themselves. Garnett had emerged as the team's emotional leader, but he wasn't always willing to take charge on the floor. Some fretted he was too selfless to win. Allen couldn't make a basket, leading to speculation that either his legs or his nerves were shot. Only Pierce seemed capable of raising his game to the next level.
So even after an impressive series win over favored Detroit in the Eastern Conference Finals, all the smart guys picked the Lakers to romp in the Finals (and I saw no reason to quarrel with that conventional wisdom). Everybody kept repeating how L.A. had the best player in the world, the reigning NBA MVP, in Kobe Bryant; had the complementary stars, in Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom, that even Michael Jordan had needed to go all the way; had the deeper, more talent bench and, of course, had the ultimate Zen master, Phil Jackson pulling the springs. All those notions unraveled in this 2008 Finals, most conspicuously Tuesay night in Boston's 131-92 title-clinching romp.
Bryant's impersonation of MJ was sadly lacking. He averaged just 25 points a game, down from his regular season mark and way down from the three previous playoff rounds, and shot only 40 percent (32 percent from three-point range), including a wretched 7-22 when the Lakers were facing elimination. And when he became frustrated with the limitations of his teammates, his one-man game was largely ineffective (and, frankly, didn't measure up to LeBron James's version, let alone MJ's.) Jordan was known to bark at a teammate or two, but far more discreetly than Kobe whose blistering of his teammates for their shoddy play wound up in the well-read blog of Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling's, who had been sitting courtside near the Lakers bench. Then again he had plenty of cause to blister. Gasol and Odom were softer than the morning dew, not up to banging bodies with the Celtics. And while the Boston bench—James Posey, P. J. Brown, Leon Power and Eddie House—made major contributions, the Lakers subs looked lost on the floor, standing around while waiting for Kobe to do his thing.
It now, of course, appears that Boston was always the better team—certainly a far superior defensive unit in a game where defense wins championships and, from all appearances, a more emotionally cohesive one too. And Jackson may simply have had no answers at his disposal, no matter how deeply he meditated. Still, analyst Jeff Van Gundy astutely noted a lot of quit in the Lakers defense, even while they were winning Game 5. And Jackson has to bear some responsibility for the way the whole team, except possibly Kobe, seemed to quit in Game 6. Just take a gander at these stats, all reflecting effort, from that final smack down at the Garden: rebounds, Celtics 48, Lakers 29; offensive rebounds Celtics 14, Lakers 2; steals Celtics 18, Lakers 4; blocked shots, Celtics 4, Lakers zero!
The Celtics played out of their minds for the entire evening, so I guess Garnett, alternately weeping and screaming, can be forgiven for confusing green heat with white heat. Still, his epitaph for the 2008 NBA Finals suits the occasion just fine: "Top of the World, Ma!"