Their trip to Rome was just two years ago. That’s it: two years. It wasn’t so long ago that the Celtics couldn’t remember all the details of it or that they looked any different back then. No, that wasn’t it.
But there had been changes since the bonding trip there, changes that couldn’t be detected from their Roman pictures. Their most memorable one, the one Doc Rivers loved and had framed, was taken outside of the renowned Colosseum.
They were all in the best shape of their lives then. Hungry. Humble. Strong. Gracious to those in their group, cautious of all others. Connected to one another in ways that they didn’t expect and struggled to explain.
“Warriors,” Rivers said when he thought of the photo. “The symbolism of that picture couldn’t have been more perfect. Listen, God was on our side; I don’t know. To go to Rome with seventeen guys—only a few of them had played together before—to go somewhere and get sequestered with that team was so perfect.
“The bus rides to and from practice took forever. It was the greatest team-building trip because no cell phones were working, and the guys had to talk to each other. That team—that was a rough team. I wouldn’t want to play against that team. Forget about the Big Three. Start thinking of some of the other guys that you had to deal with: Perk. Rondo. Tony Allen. Posey and Eddie were the spiritual leaders of our second unit, and they weren’t having nonsense from anyone.
“Danny will get credit for the Big Three, but he really should get credit for the other players he brought in, too.”
They hadn’t won a title yet, so back then maybe they thought this type of closeness was the championship norm. They knew better now. What they did then was a stand-alone rarity. No NBA team, certainly not a twenty-four-win one, had imported so many new players—starters and role-players alike—and galloped to the top of the sport. The league had been celebrating champions for more than sixty years, and none of them had a profile like that. Never happened. Until they did it.
It wasn’t possible to do that again, for the Celtics or anyone else. Where they were now, with bodies being repaired and relationships in need of repair, was the place everyone else lived. That was the story of the rest of the NBA. That was the story of the global workplace, regardless of industry.
Whatever it was, the Celtics were all in on it. They’d determined that Kevin Garnett’s right knee wouldn’t stop him from being an excellent player. He’d have to discover a different path to excellence because that knee and his age—thirty-three—clipped some of his quickness and buoyancy. Perhaps the biggest challenge for him, his bosses, and his peers would be a mental one. They all needed the driven Garnett, but a driven player with refocused expectations.
For example, the three-thousand-minute/eighty-game seasons were gone. The seasons in which he casually stacked rows of double-doubles because that’s just who he was were probably gone. He wouldn’t be able to consistently rely on some of his perfected techniques: He’d always been able to use speed to slip past other big men, who he was faster than, and then lean on his gifted combination of athleticism, strength, and passion to leap over them.
While he said, and everyone knew, that he didn’t like to show vulnerability, could he accept that he was now exactly that? Vulnerable, unquestionably. He’d had the injury, the reinjury, a spring 2009 surgery, and now a Celtics’ maintenance plan for him in the fall. His career wasn’t over; his career as MVP KG was.
He remained the conscience of the Big Three, and he could still play.
For the Celtics to win the finals this season, they’d have to be true to their talent and their personalities. If they tried to bring their Rome insights to this year’s team, it would fail. They were different players and people now. Everyone could see it and sense it. The Big Three’s collective ability was crisper two years ago, but the team’s overall talent was better now. Rajon Rondo hadn’t taken a star turn two years ago. Big Baby Davis wasn’t getting starters’ minutes and winning playoff games two years ago. Tony Allen hadn’t fulfilled his calling as an all-league defender.
There was also more tension and less trust since Rome.
Ray Allen and Rondo were friendly for business purposes, but they weren’t friends. It’s not that friendship was required on any pro team, but this had the potential to be personal and nasty.
Maybe it was how different they appeared to be: Rondo, the finicky contrarian, and Allen, the compatible pro. Or it could have been Allen’s sensitivity to being the third wheel of the Big Three. That was difficult on its own and trickier now because there were signs that he was close to losing that unofficial number three slot to Rondo.
There were money matters for Allen as well. He was entering the final year of his contract, and he knew what that meant. He was due to make almost $20 million, so his expiring contract made it—the contract, not necessarily him—an attractive trade commodity. He’d have to brace himself for lots of trade rumors and legitimate trade discussions.
Rondo and Doc Rivers had plenty of arguments, the frequency and tone of them seeming to increase the better Rondo played. Sometimes they argued because Rondo wanted to push the offense and team to places where Rivers didn’t think it was ready to go. There were arguments over Rondo’s listening. That is, he didn’t always do it. And made no apologies for it. He picked up everything quickly and became bored and annoyed when others didn’t. There were times he crossed the line and had to be called out on it.
In what may have been a first in NBA contract announcements, Rondo’s agents volunteered that what slowed negotiations with the Celtics on an extension for the point guard was Rondo’s attitude. The agents said that the Celtics were concerned about their client’s leadership and wanted him to show more of it if he were going to be a long-term player with them.
Imagine. That was included in the prologue of a new, five-year, $55 million agreement between Rondo and the Celtics. It would have been completely fair if Celtics fans had made the corresponding leap: If the people who work for Rondo are willing to admit this about him, the real stories must be even worse than this.
Fifty games into the season, and Rivers was exhausted by… his life.
That was the simplest way to put it. He put so much of himself into the job that there wasn’t a lot of time to reflect on what he was doing. In the times he did, he wondered if he should continue to coach.
He had four kids, all heavily involved in sports, and he wanted to support them all. The oldest, son Jeremiah, was playing college basketball at Indiana. His only daughter, Callie, was a University of Florida volleyball player. His two younger sons, Austin and Spencer, were high school basketball players near Orlando. Austin was one of the best players in the country and would be in position to pick any college program he wanted. On visits to Boston, seventeen-year-old Austin would find himself in pickup or one-on-one games with the Celtics. When he was a freshman, Austin was at the Celtics facility with his siblings. Ainge said to Rivers, “That’s the pro right there. He’s got ‘pro’ written all over him.”
Rivers wanted to be there to witness it, so he spent thousands on personal travel between practices, games, and off days. That was part of the physical exhaustion. But there were issues on the job as well. What was wrong with his team? Why weren’t they a pleasure to coach as they had been his first two years with them?
The team’s biggest acquisition was thirty-five-year-old forward-center Rasheed Wallace. A whole Celtics group, including the Big Three and Rivers, had gone to Detroit in the spring to recruit him. They thought the former Piston would be the perfect fit on the team, with his ability to rebound and shoot with range and defend.
The reality, though, was that he hadn’t played to expectations, so there was a lot of waiting for the real Wallace to show up. His range was suddenly gone, so his 3-point percentage tanked. He had lost quickness, desire, or both on defense because that wasn’t a plus for him anymore. He was also out of shape.
Wallace had been part of the Pistons’ contending core, a group that had been involved in dozens of playoff games. In his opinion, all his deficiencies would disappear in the postseason, and that’s what he was pacing himself for. But this wasn’t pacing. There was no buildup, no gradual process of Wallace getting into better condition. It never happened, and anything positive he did was accomplished on sheer talent.
It wasn’t all on Wallace. It was a combination of everything: lack of concentration, injuries, trade rumors, arguments, petty jealousies. The team was wrapped up in a constellation of issues, and that explained why Rivers found himself probing the team’s psyche, thinking of something that would get everyone’s attention and draw them closer together.
After the fast start to the season that had become typical of the Big Three era—the team began 23–5—the Celtics slumped. In their next twenty-two games before their All-Star vacation, they went 9–13.
Garnett was voted to the All-Star team, but in those first fifty games, he’d already missed eleven because of knee pain. His absence could be felt in the numbers; the team was 5–6 without him. Pierce made the All-Star team as well, the eighth appearance of his career. He seemed to savor his selection to the game in Dallas because, at thirty-three, who knew how many more were coming? He’d missed seven Celtics games already with knee and ankle injuries. The third Celtic All-Star didn’t have any injury concerns. He’d emerged as the team’s best and most unpredictable player.
It was the first All-Star appearance for Rondo, who clearly had worked on his body during the offseason. He was noticeably stronger, and he played like it. His biggest change was on defense, where he used muscle, quick hands, and memorization of opponents’ tendencies to neutralize opponents. His Rondo Games, usually high-profile or nationally televised games in which he piled up head-spinning statistics, were happening more often. It was obvious that he was getting better on the court. Off it, he continued to be a work in progress.
The only mention of Ray Allen in Dallas was the type of conversation that he’d gotten used to. Trade talk. There was chatter among players and media that Allen was going to be moved to the Washington Wizards. Another deal had him going to Chicago. Yet another to Sacramento. The trade deadline was still a week away, and with the way the Celtics were playing, a trade wouldn’t be surprising to anyone.
On his way to Los Angeles for a game against the Lakers, Rivers spoke with Ainge and listened as the general manager briefed him on potential trades. The deadline was hours away, and doing nothing would be foolish. The men agreed that this team wasn’t going to magically correct itself. Ainge told Rivers that he had a chance to bring in a younger backup point guard—the Knicks’ twenty-five-year-old Nate Robinson—for Eddie House, who was thirty-one. The deal would include a couple of young players, J. R. Giddens and Bill Walker, who weren’t getting time in Boston anyway.
Rivers hesitated. Objectively, the trade made sense, and the Celtics would win it overwhelmingly. The problem with the view from that lens was that it removed emotion. Players and teams could never be looked at objectively.
House had become one of those guys. He was a confident shooter who didn’t back down from anyone. He was one of the players who understood what the team needed from him, and he was always ready to provide it. He’d helped deliver that historic finals comeback in game four two years ago with his accurate second-half shooting.
While the team headed to LA in February 2010, House left in the opposite direction. He was a member of the New York Knicks, his ninth team in a ten-year career.
The Lakers weren’t having any of those problems when the Celtics visited. They were the defending champions, and now, at 42–13, they were the popular choice to return to the finals for the third straight year.
Rivers agreed with that assessment. He also wanted the Celtics to believe that they’d be playing them, and he had an idea to illustrate it. He asked everyone in the team’s traveling party to give him $100. Garnett, who’d made more money than all of them in his career, was initially resistant. He asked Rivers what he was getting at. When the coach told him the purpose, Garnett was not only willing to chip in his own $100; he offered to pay for several others.
The intention was to collect some cash and hide it inside the visiting locker room at Staples Center in LA. Rivers selected assistant coach Kevin Eastman for the job of climbing up to the level of the ceiling panels, removing one, and placing a $2,600 envelope where no one would look for it. The Celtics weren’t scheduled to play the Lakers again in the regular season. Which is what Rivers’s point was: We’ll see the money when we return here for the finals.
It was an idea, bold and steeped in intrigue, that stuck with the players. If Rivers believed it, they thought, maybe he was crazy enough to be right.
They learned something about themselves in the game against the Lakers, even with Kobe Bryant taking the night off. With just over seven minutes to play, they trailed 84–80. Over the next seven minutes, they held the Lakers to 2 points. One for 11 shooting and 2 points? Over seven minutes?
If they could defend like that the rest of the way, they’d get those bills back; if they defended like that, those bills would be tip money for an all-night championship celebration in LA.
If we can play like this… Several players said it over the course of the regular season, but the truth was they couldn’t on most nights.
Rivers was constantly on planes, whether it was with his team or by himself on a quick visit to Florida. On one of those trips, with a handful of games left, he made the decision to reset. Why were they all, himself included, stressing themselves about long-forgotten parts of the season? They no longer mattered. He liked who they were headed into the playoffs.
Fortunately for the Celtics, they were familiar with the roster construction of their first-round opponent. The Miami Heat won the NBA title in 2006, but just one starter remained from that championship team, twenty-five-year-old guard Dwyane Wade. He was a great player, surrounded by well-coached role-players. Essentially, that was the profile of the Cavaliers, except the Cavaliers had a greater player in league MVP LeBron James and better complementary players, too. The Celtics easily brushed aside the Heat in five games, with the lone Miami win fueled by an entertaining 46-point eruption from Wade.
Due to their fourth-place finish in the conference, the Celtics had known for weeks who and what was coming next. The “who” was James. He didn’t seem to be aging quickly enough: He was in his seventh season now and still only twenty-five. He seemed to add a new wing to his empire each time the Celtics saw him.
When he and Pierce had a regular-season duel in 2006, James was still weak defensively. He’d closed that hole by 2008, when he and Pierce had a shootout in game seven. Even then, in a season in which he led the league in scoring, there were some shots he wouldn’t and couldn’t take. And his defense was good, not stellar.
That had all changed by 2010. All of it. He was a first-team all-league defender; he was a more efficient scorer; his passing had improved; he spent more time deconstructing coaching staffs and the strategies used to stop him; and, his own coach believed, James’s voice and personality powered the Cavaliers more than anyone realized.
Mike Brown had coached him for nearly five years and saw the various ways he pushed teammates to be better than they thought they could be. During one game, the Cavaliers were being torched with their pick-and-roll defense. Brown called timeout.
“Guys, we’re a ‘show’ team, and we’re getting slaughtered out there,” he said. “What do you guys want to do? Do you want to switch? Drop? Iso? What do you want?”
James interrupted.
“Nah. Fuck that. We’re a ‘show’ team, so we’re gonna ‘show,’ and we’re gonna do it right. And this is how we’re gonna get it done.”
James began calling out different teammates and telling them how to improve their coverage. It sounded like something KG would do. James had a lot of that fire in him, too, but it didn’t manifest the same way. And besides, people were distracted by something else in his career.
There had been a season-long traveling road show focused on James’s future. As James neared the end of his contract, the mystery revolved around his next stop. Everything he said and did was news, locally and nationally. There was a nervous, manic energy in Cleveland, a city that hadn’t won any championship in James’s lifetime. There was urgency for him to win and anxiety for him to stay.
For the Celtics, this was a significant advantage. They already knew how to play against James and his deferring teammates, and that wasn’t going to change. But Rivers had spent so much time talking about the mental side of the game that the players recognized—in themselves and opponents—when someone was in a good head space or not.
No matter what James said about not focusing on anything but the game, they knew that couldn’t be true. He did a good job of bringing his teammates together, hosting dinners at his house and organizing team activities such as bowling and Halloween parties. James wanted these to be truly inclusive gatherings, so he was sure to invite players, coaches, and staff members. The inside was not his issue. Outside of the team, his future was an inescapable topic.
Each postseason win would be framed as one more reason for James to stay. Every loss would get Cleveland fans closer to a panicked LeBron Watch. Local officials, including the governor of Ohio and the mayor of Cleveland, produced a music video begging James to stay. The song was set to the tune of the mid-1980s international hit “We Are the World,” which was created for worldwide humanitarian aid.
If that didn’t make it obvious that James, seen as a one-man economic engine, was facing pressure beyond basketball, it was clear when the games started. Whether the Celtics won or lost, it was about basketball. When the Cavs won or lost—especially when they lost—it was about the future of James.
The Celtics looked like their regular-season selves—old and average—in a game three loss to the Cavs that had them trailing the series, 2–1. They lost by 29, the worst postseason home defeat in team history. Pierce was miserable from the field (4 for 15), from 3-point range (1 for 5), and even from the free-throw line (2 for 5). It was bad, and no one suggested that there was anything beyond that.
It was just the opposite when the Celtics did something similar to the Cavs in game five. They went to Cleveland and won by 32, giving the Cavs their worst postseason home loss in team history. James was… Pierce-like. He was 3 for 14 from the field and missed his four 3-point attempts, but he did manage to go 9 for 12 from the line.
The postgame commentary was a mix of shock, fear, rage, and psychoanalysis. James’s summary statement was not viewed as sufficient or believable.
“I just missed a lot of open shots that I’m capable of making,” he explained.
He was asked about his sore elbow, his lack of aggression, and being booed by his home fans—which had a double meaning for him since he was the only player on his team actually from the Cleveland area. “We played awful. They have every right to boo us if they want to.” There was the inevitable question, the Question, about his future. He said he wasn’t thinking about it. But after the next game, in Boston, the Celtics forced him to.
For the first time all season, the pillars of the team were united. There was the Big Three, the foundational trio of this championship era. And there was Rondo, representing the Celtics’ present and their future. All four of them had their fingerprints on game six, and there were smiles—sincere, joyous smiles—on the floor and throughout the satisfied Garden.
This was fun: Rondo had 12 assists; KG had 12 rebounds; Rasheed Wallace made big shots off the bench and had 13 points. The crowd enjoyed teasing James along the way. He stepped to the free-throw line in the last three and a half minutes, and the Garden fans bellowed a mocking, rhythmic “New York Knicks” in a collective guess at his next team.
The fans’ joke was telling. This was Boston, and the disdain for New York—all things New York—was real. LeBron James could actually save the Knicks, who hadn’t won a title in nearly forty years. In theory, Celtics fans should have been rooting for him to turn away from New York, Cleveland, Chicago, and just keep heading West until he was safely clear of the Eastern Conference.
But the fans didn’t think that way, and neither did the Celtics. They had two series wins over him, and they didn’t believe he alone could do anything to change that against them. They knew how to play him, and despite his genius, they’d advanced past him. They were half right: There was nothing James could do, in Cleveland, to get through Boston. But he and a few others were the only ones who knew the plan he had in mind, a plan that would alter the next generation of NBA team-building and the previously unimaginable future of the Big Three concept. Everyone would learn about it, in a stunning way, during the summer.
For now, the public knew where he wasn’t going—to the conference finals. His last game of the season featured one of the strangest stat lines in team history: 27 points, 19 rebounds, 10 assists, 9 turnovers. A triple-double/almost-quadruple-double good-bye. As he walked off the court and into the visiting locker room, he walked by Celtics president Rich Gotham. James removed his jersey before the Cavs’ door opened.
Wow, Gotham thought, this really is happening. We’ve seen him on this team for the last time.
When the Celtics won the game and the series, taking down the top team in the East, there was so much focus on James that a postgame confession from Garnett was underplayed.
“You have to understand that chemistry is a hard thing to come by,” Garnett said. “All year, we’ve been dealing with chemistry problems. Rondo is getting better, and we’re fitting him in. At some point he’s going to take this team over, and that’s a big adjustment for us. I think the chemistry is starting to be sound now.”
Chemistry problems. Garnett spoke those words on May 13. Nine days later, no one in Boston—or in the country—knew what he was talking about. There were no chemistry problems and never had been. There had been no feud between Allen and Rondo. Wallace was exactly what the team needed. The Celtics didn’t need to be motivated to play to their potential.
That’s what three quick wins in the conference finals can do to you. The Celtics, the old Celtics from April, might have blown a 3–0 series lead. But not the new Celtics from May.
The old Celtics from way back in January might have blown a 14-point fourth-quarter lead on their way to a 2-point loss in Orlando. Not these new guys. They confidently jumped on the Magic at the beginning of game three, holding them to a 12-point first quarter. The truth was they didn’t respect this team. Not enough to have even a slight trace of doubt or fear. They pushed a 15-point lead to 20, and then 25, and all the way up to 32. They won that game in Boston by 23. The biggest indication that the Celtics had changed was that no one who played in the game, or watched it, wanted to talk about stats.
Instead, what stood out was a moment.
Four minutes into the second quarter, there was a loose ball, and Orlando’s Jason Williams had a sizable head start on everyone and should have had it first. But Rondo didn’t think so. He sprinted to the ball where Williams jogged, and he belly slid on the floor for it while Williams barely bent his knees. This was effort. This was athleticism. Rondo took the ball, did a crossover dribble on a surprised Williams, and then banked in a one-handed shot.
Danny Ainge, watching from his baseline seats, was brought out of them. He knew how he felt about the team’s season— “lethargic and up and down”—but this Rondo play was breathtaking: “It’s one of the greatest individual plays ever. Incredible.”
When they watched Rondo, Celtics fans didn’t care about the numbers. They knew that he was mesmerizing to watch, and he wasn’t a momentum player as much as he was one who captured surges. There was a moment in the game—like in game three—where you just understood that the surge was there. His shooting (4 for 14 that night) was irrelevant. He was their unsmiling hustler and conductor.
They took down the Magic in six games as well, setting themselves up for a trip to LA to meet the Lakers. And to pick up their money.
On paper, the Celtics were most committed to Rondo, whose five-year contract would begin next season. Allen would be a free agent. Pierce could opt out of his contract. Kendrick Perkins would be in a contract year next season. Rivers had a contract, but he still wasn’t sure if he wanted to come back and fulfill it.
This road to LA had been harder than anyone in the organization, from ownership to the players, had thought possible. Winning the series might hold the core of the team together, personality clashes be damned. A series loss would make Danny Ainge retreat to his office and revisit the question that stuck with him at all times: How long do I hold on to the Big Three?
Beyond the Big Three, there was the talent of Rondo in one column and the maintenance of him in the other. Could another coach deal with Rondo as well as Rivers had? It was not an exaggeration to say that the next seven games determined who the Celtics were going to be for the next several years.
Both teams were better than they were two years before, even if their records told a different story. Pau Gasol was more physical now than he was then, and the addition of forward Ron Artest gave them a strong, tough player who could match up with Pierce. For the Celtics, Rondo’s development not only changed the way the team played; it made the Lakers think of him differently, too.
Two years ago, in game four, a healthy Rondo didn’t play in the second half. That would never happen now. Tony Allen, Big Baby Davis, Nate Robinson. They’d all be expected to contribute to something they either mostly watched or weren’t here for in 2008.
After four games, with the series tied at two, there were several events that previewed where this was headed. Kobe Bryant and Gasol did whatever they wanted in game one. Bryant scored 30 points, which was expected, but Boston hadn’t seen this Gasol. He was persistent in every aspect of the game and finished with 23 points, 14 rebounds, 5 assists, and 3 blocks. In game two, Rondo had a triple-double, and many of his assists were to Allen, who set a finals record by sinking eight 3-pointers. He had 32 points, and the Celtics won, but the Gasol-Garnett matchup was worth noting. KG was in foul trouble and finished with 6 points. Gasol had 25 points and 8 rebounds.
Game three was a reminder of how maddening pro basketball can be. The same man who sets a finals shooting record in LA can return to Boston and miss everything. Allen made eight 3s in game two and missed eight—0 for 8—in game three. He was 0 for 13 on the night. Garnett did have 25 points and looked more like himself, but the Celtics were down 2–1.
In game four, Rivers and Phil Jackson leaned in different directions. Jackson rode his starters hard; Rivers went to his bench and stayed with the unit well into the fourth quarter. In a coincidental tribute to the player he was traded for, Nate Robinson helped his team win it. Eddie House had done the same thing in this game in 2008. Davis, who once called himself the Ticket Stub compared to KG’s Big Ticket, delivered 18 points and 5 rebounds. Robinson had 12 points and 2 assists. After one emphatic stretch of play, the five-foot-nine Robinson jumped on the six-foot-nine Davis’s back. Afterward, they joked that they were Shrek and Donkey from the animated movie.
That left three games potentially, with two of them in LA. The winner of game five, statistically, was likely to win the series.
Dwyane Wade, eliminated by the Celtics in the first round, was in Boston attentively watching game five. So was the new owner of the soon-to-be Brooklyn Nets, Mikhail Prokhorov, who piqued the NBA’s interest when he announced that he expected his team to win a title in five years and presumably be kings of New York. Prokhorov didn’t realize that all the smart general managers in the league would be calling his GM in a few years, aware that ownership pressure often leads to bad deals.
The Celtics controlled most of game five and probably knew they were going to win it in the third quarter. Bryant put on a show there, scoring 19 points in ten minutes, several on well-contested shots. They could have been buried by an outburst like that, but they still led by 6 heading into the fourth quarter. They led by a dozen with four minutes to play, and when the lead began to shrink in the final ninety seconds, Jackson called a timeout. He knew ABC’s mics were on him, but he didn’t care. He used the opportunity to motivate his team and to take a cheap shot that was also true.
“This team has lost more games in the fourth quarter than anybody in the NBA,” he told the Lakers. “They know how to lose in the fourth quarter, all right? And they’re showing us that right now.”
He knew the Celtics weren’t going to do that in game five. But he wanted the sentiment out there as the Celtics made their final trip to LA of the season, up 3–2.
Wyc Grousbeck hadn’t been listening to Phil Jackson, but he was still uncomfortable. He thought his team would win it. He just felt it needed to happen in game six. There was something about going the distance with the Lakers that made him uneasy.
In LA, seven minutes into game six, the Celtics learned that part of their identity was broken. Perkins, their only true center, tried to grab a rebound between Bryant and Andrew Bynum. He fell to the floor screaming, and he grabbed his right knee. It was as bad as it sounded and looked: a torn ACL.
We win it if we have him, Steve Pagliuca thought as he watched Perk being helped to the locker room.
He was finished for the rest of game six and for game seven. Of course there would be a game seven. The Celtics were down 20 at the half and 25 after three quarters. There would be no special comeback tonight. Jackson said the Celtics blew leads. He should have added, When they can get them…
They were never in it. Boston’s “Beat LA” chant wasn’t heard anywhere. With a minute to play, the Staples crowd broke out in “Boston sucks.”
One more game in downtown LA and a cap would be put on the season and, appropriately, the NBA’s first decade of the century. The season would have its champion, and one type of NBA—with its legacy franchises and iconic players sticking with them—would become an anomaly.
The league was changing. Bryant’s fourteen-year stay in LA and Pierce’s twelve-year run with Boston was going to be the exception. Everything was more lucrative now—team values, TV contracts, global media rights, player salaries—and therefore everything was more fluid. Bryant and Pierce were not Magic and Larry, but they were more connected to that era’s sensibility than this one’s. It was all about to change. The last game of the season, and last of its era, had to be memorable.
Just a few minutes into it, the tone was set. It was going to be a physical game. Players and coaches always appreciated knowing that early so they could figure out how to play. The message from the veteran officials—Dan Crawford, Scott Foster, and Joe Crawford—was clear: Play as hard as you can; we’ll whistle the obvious and play through everything else. Both teams were fine with that because both of them liked the contact.
The problem for the Celtics popped up in the first two minutes, and it wasn’t going anywhere. They were too small. The Lakers were slinging bad shots at the basket, and missing badly, but it didn’t matter because they kept retrieving offensive rebounds. It was a real math problem for the Celtics. Simply, they took better shots than the Lakers, but the Lakers had three times as many opportunities for all shots, whether they were good or not.
After thirteen minutes, the Lakers had 11 offensive rebounds. They couldn’t shoot, but they could defend and rebound, and it kept them close. They trailed 40–34 at halftime, and they were making 26 percent of their shots. Bryant was 3 for 14. Doc Rivers and Tom Thibodeau decided to throw a different look at Bryant: They doubled him. With numbers like his, the Lakers could have been down by a dozen.
They were down by that—actually 13—with twenty minutes left in their season. Five minutes later, they still trailed by 9, 56–47, after a Wallace jumper. Fifteen minutes remained in the game, and Wallace, starting for Perkins, grimaced.
This was going to be an issue in the final minutes, and it was connected to what had been discussed all year. Wallace was too out of shape to keep up. He didn’t have the conditioning to push the Lakers’ big men, and he struggled up the court. His first five minutes of the game were inspired, and now he glitched.
Entering the fourth quarter, the Celtics held a 4-point lead. This is where Jackson hoped his nationally broadcast cheap shot could seep into Boston minds. They had another fourth-quarter lead; would they lose this one, too?
Really, with nine minutes to play and the Celtics still ahead by 4, the winner of this game would need basketball skills and Jedi wisdom. Nobody could hide their weaknesses anymore, so the struggle was to work around them.
Bryant wasn’t going to suddenly get hot. He was 5 for 20 after three. Allen wasn’t going to start making 3s. All the energy in his legs was devoted to slowing Bryant, and he had nothing else to give. Rondo wasn’t going to start making free throws; in the series, he was 5 for 19 from the line. The Celtics weren’t going to outrebound or outmuscle the Lakers. They couldn’t box out Gasol. Couldn’t. He was too much.
This was digging time for both teams. Find something, anything, that will squeeze a few more opportunities for your teammates. Both the Celtics and Lakers thought they had something with six minutes left. Allen made a couple of free throws—he’d missed just one all series—to put them up 3. Then Lakers guard Derek Fisher made a 3 to tie it.
Even when the Lakers appeared to cut off all Celtic options, when they controlled all rebounding, didn’t allow shots in the paint, and dared someone to score, the game was close. The Lakers were up 6 with ninety seconds left, but Wallace came out of a timeout to hit a 3 from the left side to cut the lead in half, 76–73.
It was the final series, Celtics-Lakers, so everything that happened from here until the end of the game would be exaggerated. And permanent. No two franchises had finals moments that were so seared into the memories of pro basketball fans. In their head-to-head matchups, both teams had delivered solid basketball lessons over the years; it was not always the primary stars who were capable of making closing plays. There were winning plays by Larry and Magic and also by Gerald Henderson and Michael Cooper.
Ron Artest had essentially played two different styles for the Lakers within one series. In the first five games, he was a 30 percent shooter who was a liability with the ball. But he was much better in game six and made three 3-pointers. In the last minute, Pierce played Artest like he was that 30 percent shooter, and the Celtics paid for it.
Pierce played off Artest, who hung around the right 3-point arc. Artest had an open 3 and took it, long before a surprised and late-arriving Pierce could close.
It was either devastating or a game winner, depending on your allegiance. But seconds later, some hope was found when Allen finally found his legs and countered with a corner 3 over Odom.
It wasn’t a pretty game, but it was close. Just over thirty seconds remained, and the game revealed its basic pattern on a simple sequence. Bryant took a 3, missed it, and Gasol grabbed the offensive rebound. His retrieval gave the Lakers another opportunity, and Bryant was fouled. His free throws gave them a lead that they wouldn’t lose.
Gasol walked away with 18 rebounds, exactly half of them offensive. That was more than the combined total of Garnett, Wallace, and Baby Davis. These forty-eight minutes had been a game of keep-away, and the season had become that as well.
The Celtics stood in a circle in their locker room, arm in arm, and cried. What they’d lost was a game, but the tears had more depth than that. They cried as if they were grieving something. Grousbeck and Pags saw it and got out quickly so they wouldn’t cry themselves. Bob Epstein stayed and was reminded of why he’d become a co-owner. He hadn’t done it solely for the money, and the distraught players—all well paid—hadn’t either. “I’ve never seen so many tough guys so despondent,” he said. “It was devastating to each of them. You stand in the middle of it, and you realize how much winning means to them.” The Lakers had the title that the Celtics thought they’d win, and now each of their memories would be filled with different game images that would haunt them for weeks, if not years.
Summer had begun abruptly, and it was decision time. For Ainge, Rivers, and many of the major players in a soon-to-be- reconfigured NBA.