Celtics - Lakers: Back to the Future 11

You all know the back story; you know the pedigree of each of these two iconic sports franchises.  At this point you should know that this is the 11^th NBA Finals to be decided by the Boston Celtics and Los Angeles Lakers.  Little facts like the all-time record in this head-to-head match-up (8-2 in favor of the Celtics), the fact that the Lakers won the last two, and the names of the players to don the green or gold during these games are by and large second nature.  All the sub-plots and countless statistics have been run-down and analyzed, and there really isn’t much left to bring to the table, something that will make a vast audience say, “Wow, I didn’t know that.” 

Those aforementioned sub-plots are as follows:  1) Kobe Bryant looking to validate his career by winning a championship without Shaquille O’Neal, in an attempt to solidify his basketball legacy.  2) Paul Pierce returning to his home state of California, where he always seems to come up big, with the aspirations of winning his (and everyone else on the Celtic’s aside from James Posey and Sam Cassell’s) first NBA championship. 3) Red Auerbach, the Celtics’ legend has nine NBA championships as a coach to his name.  Phil Jackson, the current coach of the Los Angeles Lakers also has nine championships.  If the Lakers win this series, well, you can tell me what 9+1 is.

And those are just a few of many more sub-plots that can be documented.  Pretty elementary, huh?  You have to remember though; I told you I was most likely not going to surprise you. 

The NBA has given the media plenty of free time to hype up the upcoming NBA Finals (5 full days in fact; which seems longer given the steady plate of basketball eaten up over the last month or so).  If you keep a steady pulse, nothing you read about the history of this series is new, and the self-proclaimed “fluff” (as Lakers Guard Kobe Bryant puts it) will just keep on coming.  Call it fluff, hype, or call it the beginning of a resurgence of sorts on behalf of the NBA.  All three classifications are valid ones. 

That is only one end of the spectrum, however.  There comes a time when you have to push aside the fluff and get back to talking actual basketball.  This is that time as a fan or interested party, when you take the players of each team and diagnose match-ups, the depth of each team’s bench, the coaching staff, the training staff, what type of cereal each player had with their breakfast that morning, the dead spots in the parquet floor, the temperature in the visitor’s locker room, the most scrutable of the scrutable is examined right up until game-time.  Then the contents are put back into their glass jars on top of that shelf as your high-definition televi

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