Boston Celtics' Kevin Garnett (left), Ray Allen (centre) and Paul Pierce celebrate in the locker room after winning the NBA basketball championship with a 131-92 win over the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night. - AP
BOSTON (AP):
THE 2008 Boston Celtics returned to glory in the style of the great teams that preceded them with a dominant win on Tuesday night to clinch the NBA title.
Playing beneath the ageing championship banners of decades past hanging from the rafters, the Celtics won their 17th NBA title after a 22-year wait by routing the Los Angeles Lakers 131-92 to clinch Game Six of the finals, winning the series 4-2.
It was the first title for the new generation of Celtics, led by their Big Three of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen.
"It means so much more because these are the guys, the Havliceks, the Bill Russells, the Cousys," Pierce said. "These guys started what's going on with those banners. They don't hang up any other banners but championship ones.
"And now I'm a part of it."
Garnett scored 26 points with 14 rebounds, Allen scored 26 and Pierce, the finals MVP who shook off a sprained right knee sustained in Game One, added 17.
Singing night
With the outcome assured, Boston fans sang into the night as if they were in a pub on nearby Canal Street, and taunted Kobe Bryant and his Lakers, who drowned in a green-and-white wave for 48 minutes.
Boston built a 23-point halftime lead and obliterated the Lakers, who were trying to become the first team to overcome a 3-1 deficit in the finals.
Boston's 39-point win surpassed the NBA record for the biggest margin of victory in a championship clincher; the Celtics beat the Lakers 129-96 in Game 5 of the 1965 NBA finals.
In the final minute, Pierce doused Celtics coach Doc Rivers with Gatorade. Owner Wyc Grousbeck, who named his group Banner 17 to signal his ambition, put a cigar in his mouth to mimic the trademark of Red Auerbach, the patriarch who had a hand in the franchise's first 16 titles.
Garnett kissed the leprechaun logo at centre court and then found Russell, the Hall of Famer who taught him the Celtic way, for a long embrace.
"I got my own. I got my own," Garnett said. "I hope we made you proud."
"You sure did," Russell said.
Rivers pulled Pierce, Garnett and Allen with 4:01 left and they shared a group hug with their coach, who was nearly run out of town after a poor 2006-07 season. Rivers lost his father at the beginning of this remarkable run, a season no one expected.
His dad's birthday
By the time Rivers was handed the Larry O'Brien Trophy, it was June 18 - his late father's birthday.
"My first thought was what would my dad say," Rivers said, "and honestly, I started laughing because I thought he would probably say, if you knew my dad, 'It's about time. What have you been waiting for?'."
It's was Boston's first title since the passing of Auerbach, whose presence was the only thing missing on this night. Even Auerbach, who died in 2006, benefitted from the victory as it ensured he was not overtaken for championship victories by Lakers coach Phil Jackson.
The Boston-Los Angeles rivalry, sharp in the minds of long-time fans but only black-and-white footage from the '60s and highlights of players in short shorts in the '80s to newer supporters, remains tilted toward the Atlantic Ocean. The Celtics are 9-2 against the Lakers in the finals.
Bryant, the regular season MVP, finished with 22 points on seven-of-22 shooting.
He started 4-of-5 from the field and seemed intent on forcing a Game Seven. But he missed seven shots in a row and everywhere he went, LA's No. 24 ran smack into a wall of Boston defence.
"They were definitely the best defence I've seen the entire playoffs," Bryant said. "I've seen some pretty stiff ones and this was right up there with them. The goal was to win a championship, it wasn't to win MVP or anything like that, it was to win a championship."
Unbeatable trio
Garnett and Allen were All-Stars in other cities, Minnesota and Seattle respectively, on teams going nowhere. But brought together in trades last summer, they joined Pierce and formed an unbeatable trio.
They resisted being called The Big Three, a nickname given to Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish two decades ago.
Boston built a 58-35 halftime lead, and unlike Game Two when they let the Lakers trim a 24-point lead to two in the fourth quarter before recovering, the Celtics never stopped.
They pushed their lead to 31 in the third, and with Boston still up by 29 after three, plastic sheets started going up in the Celtics' locker room in preparation for a champagne celebration.
No team had to work harder for a championship than these Celtics, who were playing in their record 26th post-season game after being pushed to seven games by Atlanta and Cleveland before taking care of Detroit in six to win the Eastern Conference title.
