BOSTON — Victory cigars smell better in Boston. In the long, green line of Celtics tradition, add Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen. The Big Three did what is thought impossible in this me, me, me generation of the NBA. They made the name on the front of the uniform count for everything.
“If you’re going to win a championship, you want to win one with the Boston Celtics, man,” Pierce said Tuesday night, when the Celtics beat Los Angeles 131-92 to clinch the championship on the most famous floor in pro basketball. Tougher in spirit and body, Boston forced the Lakers to quit.
Eight months earlier, on a chilly, gray October morning, when the buzz in Beantown was about the Red Sox and the World Series, Celtics coach Doc Rivers stood in a gym out in the ‘burbs after a practice. He was asked the big question about the team’s newly assembled Big Three. How could a coach keep Allen, Garnett and Pierce from tripping over each other’s egos?
Although these Celtics had yet to win any of their 66 regular-season games or make a long, hard run to the franchise’s 17th NBA title, smile filled the face of Rivers. He did not see ego. He saw muscle.
“The best players always have to carry the team bus. Now, we have three of them to share the load,” Rivers said.
And, in the end, the Big Three, with a combined annual salary of $55 million, proved to be worth every penny. They did all the heavy lifting for the Celtics. As a result, for the first time in their professional basketball careers, Garnett, Allen and Pierce can hoist the big gold ball that is the Larry O’Brien Trophy.
“You know, their money can buy everything except for the trophy,” Rivers said, “and the only way you’re going to do that is you’re going to have to lean on someone else to achieve that goal.”
The Celtics are so rich in history that every championship brings joy to a new generation as it pays tribute to the dead who loved old-school basketball principles of unrelenting defense and team before self. Rivers grew up on the west side of Chicago. When he played basketball as a kid, his father would often come to games in his work clothes, a police uniform.
Grady Rivers died in November. He missed his son’s proudest moment. But that did not stop the victory from being a tribute to a father who built the foundation for this achievement.
“My first thought was: What would my dad say?” said Rivers, often doubted as coach of the Celtics. “And, honestly, I started laughing, because I thought he would probably say, if you knew my dad: ‘It’s about time.’ ”
The MVP of the Finals was Pierce, who stole every big scene on the league’s biggest stage
Overcoming an injured knee, Pierce came out of a wheelchair to win Game 1. He averaged 21.8 points against the Lakers. And when it was time to give Rivers a Gatorade shower in Game 6, it was Pierce who did the honors of pouring.
For those of you keeping score at home in Denver, Pierce was the 10th player selected in the 1998 NBA draft. That was the year the Nuggets picked Raef LaFrentz at No. 3 in the first round.
“They don’t hang any other banners (in Boston) but championship ones, and now we’re a part of it,” Pierce said.
In recent decades, it has not been easy being green, from the death of young player Len Bias to the bitter failure of Rick Pitino. For the conspiracy theorists who like to think the NBA is rigged: Why would the league allow its most-storied franchise to suffer 22 years between championships? Point guard Rajon Rondo was four months old when the Celtics last won it all.
When the NBA title finally returned to the famous parquet floor, and Boston routed the Lakers with a Game 6 so loud it could wake the ghost of Red Auerbach, many old Celtics eyes were smiling in the new Garden, with Bill Russell, Tom Heinsohn and John Havlicek among the witnesses.
“The leprechaun logo is so much a part of the NBA, it’s integrated in the environment,” Allen had explained to me months ago, when this 4-2, resounding defeat of the Lakers in the best-of-seven championship series was nothing more than a dream.
“You walk on the court in Boston, you don’t really even notice the green paint, because the color has been synonymous with the game for so long. All you know is it looks like basketball.”
Boston got a trophy from commissioner David Stern. America’s current No. 1 sports town will have to schedule another parade and a Wheaties box has already been printed. But the official moment of coronation was after the final buzzer, when Russell wrapped Garnett in a hug as big as the Celtics tradition.
“Anything’s possible!” Garnett shouted.
It felt right. Basketball looks best wearing green.
Mark Kiszla: 303-954-1053 or mkiszla@denverpost.com
HERO
Paul Pierce.
Who else? The crowd in Boston chanted “MVP! MVP!” throughout the night in which the Celtics won their 17th NBA title, and they were not referring to Kobe Bryant. From the moment Pierce emerged from the locker room and returned from a knee injury in Game 1, this series was over.
ZEROS
Foreign flops.
The flashes of brilliance from L.A.’s foreign imports — Spain’s Pau Gasol, Slovenia’s Sasha Vujacic and Vladimir Radmanovic of Serbia and Montenegro — were few and far between. They looked weak against the Celtics, whose roster was made in the USA.
WINNING TIME
Punching their Big Ticket.
The biggest date in the 2008 NBA Finals actually happened on July 31, 2007, when Celtics general manager Danny Ainge was rewarded for his relentless pursuit of Kevin Garnett and pulled off the trade that returned championship defense to Boston.
X’S AND O’S
Doctor’s orders.
Big props to Boston coach Doc Rivers, who made L.A.’s Phil Jackson look old and a step slow with every strategic move and inspirational word in the Finals. Shame on those folks, myself included, who doubted Rivers had the right stuff to win a championship.
THE SCENE
Gang green.
To get to the Garden on the subway, there’s only one way to go: the Green Line, which rattles and rolls with civic pride. I stood next to a bald, middle-aged man wearing a green mohawk wig made out of pipe cleaners. He inspired a trainload of fans to chant: “Let’s go Celtics.”
Mark Kiszla, The Denver Post
