Ok, the NBA Finals start on Thursday night and it’s going to be a wild one. With everything that has happened for both teams over the past year, you gotta expect that the fireworks are going to continue. You have the Lakers and the Celtics for the title and several other interesting subplots:
KG’s career - Will he ever win one? Can he be clutch when it really matters? Can he lead a team to the promised land?
Kobe’s career - Is he the closest thing to MJ? Can he will his team to the title by being THE man?
Paul Pierce’s career – Can he finally become a Celtic that wins a title and not the Celtic with the most playoffs wins without a title?
Phil Jackson – Does he get the championship that puts him past Red Auerbach, while beating Red’s old team?
A few months ago you had Kobe going on blast to every media outlet available about him wanting to be traded and how it made no sense to keep a young Bynum when they could have gotten Jason Kidd in a trade with NJ. You had the Celtics who tanked in order to win the Greg Oden sweepstakes (see how that went), but during the offseason Danny Ainge made some deals to pull in Ray Allen and KG (a coup at best). With the Lakers, Kobe decided to shut up (thank goodness) for a while and just play basketball. While ever other GM in the business sat around and salivated about how they could put a package together to get Kobe, Mitch Kupchak was sitting around with rosary beads, some magic fairy dust, and about 12 rabbits feet (sorry PETA). We thought that he would have jumped out of a window when Bynum went down with a knee injury, but somewhere in Memphis we heard a heart break. Jerry West, decided that in his last few months of working with the Grizz that he’d give the franchise that he helped create (on the court and off) one last assist. The Grizz gave up Pau Gasol (the face of the franchise) for Kwame Brown (nothing bad left to say), Javaris Crittendon (who in my estimation will end up being a decent guard), and basically a ham sandwich, a bag of chips (not the cheap ones), and a soda. Wasn’t it really awkward during the presentation of the West Conference Championship that West was presenting the trophy to the Lakers? The Lakers should have been presenting the trophy to West with a check attached to it. He’s the reason that they were able to pull this off (yes the players played, but man, what an assist). The whole time West was speaking, Kobe was grinning like a little kid that found out the secret to getting ice cream or something.
The Celtics on the other hand, pieced together their current team with an assist from ‘within’ also. Again, every other GM in the NBA cringed as they saw the package that Minny took for KG. Yes, Boston gave up Al Jefferson (a decent big who can score in the West), Gerald Green (if basketball was just all dunking), Theo Ratliff (who was on Detroit's playoff roster), Ryan Gomes (go ahead and look him up to see who he is), Sebastian Telfair (his claim to fame is being Marbury’s cousin) and some picks, but you have to look at that deal and imagine the conversation that occurred:
Ainge: (on the phone with McHale)…Kevin, I’m trying to win man. I’ve got Paul Pierce, I took a shaky Ray Allen from Seattle, and now I need a big to finish out the team,….
McHale: Win? Man, I’m just trying to make our team interesting during the winter, there’s nothing else to do here in Minny, but when the summer comes I don’t want to have to work anymore. Don’t tell anyone that,…..
Ainge: We have to win here, it’s the Celtics for gosh sakes. Don’t you remember all of the good times we had here during our heyday? What about KG? Is he available? You guys haven’t done much with his talent yet?
McHale: Yeah, he’s available, but right now, everyone wants him. But I need to somehow keep this team in mediocrity, yet still keep my job. Well, I’m not worrying about the job so much, I have pictures on people here. What kind of deal were you thinking about? And don’t think about including Paul Pierce in a deal, he’s too good.
There you have it, the background that provides us with the Lakers vs. Celtics for the NBA Championship. May the best team win (Go Celtics).
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