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The Lakers weren’t good enough, and they found out that ice-cold reality during a 39-point, beat-you-like-you-cheated-on-my-little-sister lashing from the Celtics in Game 6 of the NBA Finals last summer.
The starters, with Kobe Bryant in the middle, were trapped on the bench watching the Celtics dance through the game’s waning minutes. They’ll never feel so humbled again in their lives.
“To be not only beaten, but humiliated, in a game like that to end the series, and have them celebrating and throwing [stuff] all over the court, disrupting the game with two and a half minutes left to go," Lakers coach Phil Jackson recalled during a conversation with reporters last night in Toronto. “There’s a certain element of, you know, we have some serious work to do.”
Eventually, they got up and left the court, heads low, pride lower, dodging green and white confetti. They walked to the Garden’s visiting locker room, just past the Legends restaurant that is guarded by a Larry Bird statue and got ready to board a plane bound for L.A.
Without that night, the Lakers might not be running away with the Western Conference’s top seed this season, and they’ll arrive in Boston tonight for the first time in nearly eight months with thank-you cards in hand.
But the Celtics have a measuring-stick defeat, as well. Their nine-point loss to the Lakers on Christmas Day proved to be a message the size of the “Hollywood” sign telling them the Lakers were hardly the pushovers they met in the Finals.
The loss at the Staples Center snapped the C’s 19-game winning streak and whipped them into a tailspin that saw them lose seven of nine before they could catch themselves.
The Celtics have since recaptured the league’s best record by winning 12 in a row. Tonight won’t be so much of a rematch as it is a renewal of acquaintances, two teams putting their growth to the test with thoughts of June — past and immediate future — conspicuously dangling in the back of their minds.
“It’ll be one for the ages,” Ray Allen told reporters Tuesday in Philly. “People will be excited. It’s a big game. It’s definitely a playoff atmosphere.”
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