Celtics' 17th Championship: The Perfect Storm

Too many times we attach clichés to situations that don’t deserve them. I am guilty of it myself.

Down by 10 in the fourth quarter of a football game, Vince Young passes for one touchdown and runs another one in to win the game in the final minutes, and I’m running up and down the hallway with my arms flailing, screaming

"What a miracle comeback! It's the greatest comeback of all time!"

Any self-respecting football fan knows that wouldn’t be the "greatest comeback ever" in the NFL, and it's quite possible that wasn't even the greatest comeback that week.

The greatest ever belongs to the (sigh) Buffalo Bills, who, in 1992, came back from a 35-3 third-quarter deficit to win in overtime.

Being a life-long Dolphin fan, I feel like Indiana Jones looking over into the pit of snakes.

"It had to be Buffalo, huh?"

It’s rare that the cliché actually fits the situation to which we apply it. Having watched that Buffalo game in 1992, the announcers screaming at the end of the game was perfectly warranted; we had just witnessed the greatest comeback in NFL history. They were right, and the phrase went from being cliché to being true.

That is why, after sobering up from my three-day celebration of the Boston Celtics  winning their 17th championship, I realized exactly what I saw in Boston and (more ironically) what the media missed.

Wikipedia defines “The Perfect Storm” as the “simultaneous occurrence of weather events which, taken individually, would be far less powerful than the  storm resulting of their chance combination.” It goes on to say that “such occurrences are rare by their very nature, so that even a slight change in any one event contributing to the 'perfect storm' would lessen its overall impact.”

We witnessed a perfect storm this past year in the NBA Finals.

It’s not just about several small storms coming together to create one large storm. It’s about several small storms with precisely the right intensity coming together at precisely the right time in precisely the right place to provide a storm exponentially larger than that of the sum of its parts.

It started with the end of last year. The Celtics had won only 24 games, giving them the distinction of having the worst record in the league. It was rock bottom.

Had the Celtics been a winning team and on the verge of a championship, it would have lessened the overall impact of the storm, and more importantly, the changes the Celtics made in the offseason would not have been sparked.

But as it happened, the Celtics brought in Ray Allen, an eight-time All-Star and one of the purest three-point shooters in the league. He had never seen the NBA Finals, and fans wondered if, in the twilight of his career, he would retire without a championship.

Then they brought in Kevin Garnett. Not quite at the end of his career, but certainly on the backside of a remarkable stretch in which he has been the league MVP and a perennial All-Star, but also had never seen the NBA Finals. Would he also end his career without the coveted Larry O'Brien?

These two stars joined the incumbent Paul Pierce, who, as Ray and Kevin had been, was the lone All-Star for his team. Also like his new teammates, he carried his team on his back for years but simply didn’t have the help to get them to the mountain top.

These three players, or "storms," coalescing were enough to make your momma call you to come in off the lake and get inside before you get struck by lightning, but they were nowhere near a "Perfect Storm."

Even with the "Big Three" of Pierce, Allen, and Garnett, there were questions at the beginning of the season as to how well they would fit and play together. There was also talk that without the right role players surrounding them, the dream of a championship for them and the city of Boston would remain just that: a dream.

But just like the mashed potatoes on Richard Dreyfuss’ plate that he desperately tries to form into a hill, the big picture started to take shape.

The young and erratic Rajon Rondo played like a man wise beyond his years. The 22-year-old man-child Kendrick Perkins became a tower of power in the middle. And bench players Eddie House, James Posey, and P.J. Brown all seemingly bought into the fact that something special was happening.

The skies were darkening in the East. Still, the storm would become much more intense...and much more dangerous.

Along came the Finals series. It wasn’t enough that Boston was four wins away from securing its first title in 22 years; it would have to come against their arch rival, the Los Angeles Lakers, a team that all the experts and Vegas handicappers had picked as the favorites.

This was Los Angeles, the Joker to Boston's Batman, the Lex Luthor to the Celtics' Superman. The one team who has almost matched Boston championship-for-championship throughout history. Of the 62 NBA Championships won throughout the history of the league, 31 of them have been won by either Boston (17) or the Lakers (14).

L.A. having beaten Boston in the last Finals matchup between the two clubs (and standing only two trophies behind the Celtics going into this Finals), the boys in green had to be feeling like Indiana Jones as well.

"It had to be L.A., huh?"

But the winds were picking up, and the atmosphere was ominous.

So there stood the Lakers head coach, Phil Jackson, the Zen Master, with his nine championship rings. He was tied with the legendary Red Auerbach for No. 1 all time, putting him just four wins away from breaking the Celtics coaching great’s record. Must have been destiny; either that, or Red's ghost sent the current incarnation of his squad on purpose, so as to defend his honor.

Without the final ingredient, a recipe just isn’t the same. Without the last piece of a puzzle, the picture isn’t complete.

Enter Kobe Bryant. The man who has wanted to show the world he could win a championship by himself ever since he had Shaq shipped out of town. The same man that claimed he could get 40 points anytime he wanted.     

After five games, the series record was at 3-2 in Boston's favor, but Kobe, having not scored 40 points in a game yet, seemed awfully calm as he entered Game Six in Boston.

It was as if he assumed the wind and rain were over, but in reality, he was just in the eye of the hurricane. He had no idea of what was circling around him.

He was unaware of the forces that had been building all year and in the postseason, and that those forces had culminated in the Finals.

As the Ray Allen's threes rained down like a deluge, and as Kevin Garnett's slam dunks came like thunder, and as the Boston crowd's deafening cheers echoed off the rafters like a hail storm battering a tin roof, Kobe just stood there. He didn’t know; he had never seen it before.

None of us had any idea that what we were seeing with the 39-point drubbing of the Lakers in the Championship-clinching Game Six. But what I've come to realize is that we were seeing...

The Perfect Storm

 - T.W.