Purple and gold versus green and white. 30 NBA Championships among those colors. The Logo, Hondo, Bird, Magic -- all the Hall of Famers who battled at the Garden and the Forum.
At 9 p.m. tonight, none of it matters. The rivalry will exist with the fans and the media, but between the current iterations of these two teams, history gives way to basketball. Because the only way to become part of it is to play.
"I remember my brother always asking me, 'Do you want to be good or do you want to be great?'" Paul Pierce said. "And those are the questions you ask yourself when you go out and work hard each and every day."
"In order to be great, in order to be a legend, you have to win a championship."
As tradition has it, the NBA Finals must start with Game 1 -- which may be more important than usual given Doc Rivers' opponent across the chess board. Lakers coach Phil Jackson -- he of the nine NBA Championships -- is 41-0 in playoff series after taking the first game. And the Lakers have opened all three of their postseason matchups by taking 2-0 leads, but that was when they had home-court advantage. Now, coming in at 4-3 on the road, their goal is to steal one at the Garden.
The Celtics have lost just once at home in the playoffs, but the teams they beat are suddenly relevant again. Like the Cleveland series -- against a post-trade-deadline deal team -- not much can be taken from the Celtics' two contests against the Lakers, because both came before LA's blockbuster deal for center Pau Gasol.
Both the Cavs and the Detroit Pistons had big men who could play off All-Star guards by hitting open jumpers when the defense overextended -- just like Gasol and Lamar Odom can do if the Celtics get too aggressive in trapping Kobe Bryant.
"That's part of what makes them so difficult, their ability to spread the floor with the fours and fives," Rivers said. "Most teams spread it with their ones, twos and threes shooting; they step their fours and fives off and they can spread it with them, and that's different for us."
But the focus for the NBA's top-ranked defense remains, and always will be, the MVP. And unlike LeBron James, who struggled to adjust to the Celtics' doubles off pick-and-rolls, Kobe knows exactly how to break defenses down.
"I look at it as a quarterback, really, because the defenses that I face are always support defenses," Bryant said. "Not necessarily looking at an individual but just looking at where the help is coming from and where my wide receivers are going to be, and when they're going to be open and if I have to call an audible, and if I do, which one."
Kobe's ability to improvise is a great part of what makes the Lakers' scoring punch so explosive (105.9 points per game in the playoffs). But this is far more than just an 'offense wins games, defense wins championships' sort of series -- the Lakers back up their O by D'ing up, posting the highest point differential in the postseason at +6.40 (the Celtics are second at +4.3).
"They're a better defensive team than people give them credit for," Rivers said. "I liken them a little bit to the Showtime Lakers. Everybody saw the flash with the Showtime Lakers, no one saw the grit, and that's the reason they won is their grit. They're a great defensive team."
While the Lakers will have a glaring defensive hole whenever Vladimir Radmanovic is guarding Pierce and Kendrick Perkins will certainly have his hands full with Gasol, the Finals could waver on the Kevin Garnett-Odom matchup.
"Well, my favorite word in this series is going to be 'help'. A guy like that is -- you need as much help as possible," Odom said.
On the other hand, Garnett expects to have his hands full trying to cover Odom and protecting the rim against Kobe and company.
"It's just going to be about knowing what they want to do and taking that away from them," Garnett said.
That's tough to do with so many weapons available. The Lakers' bench -- Luke Walton, Sasha Vujacic, Jordan Farmar and Ronny Turiaf -- scored 32.3 points per game during the regular season. Considering the trouble Rodney Stuckey gave the Celtics, the early-to-mid second quarters and early fourth quarters may be opportune times for an LA run.
A win for the Celtics tonight would mean taking care of business, but for the Lakers a win could be a windfall. Though the Celtics finally proved they can win on the road with two victories at the Palace of Auburn Hills in the Conference Finals, the 2-3-2 format of the Finals gives the Lakers a chance to clinch at home if they can split at the Garden.
The allure of the past will hover over this series, but it's still bound to be chock full of adjustments and altered defensive schemes. It's the NBA Finals 2008 -- not 1987 -- and though it might be Pierce, Garnett and Ray Allen's first trip to the almost-promised land, take it from the younger three-time champion: the same things that were true back in November hold true today.
"With all the hype and all the media attention that surrounds the NBA Finals, once you step out there on the floor, it's about one thing and one thing only, and that's who can execute their game plan the best. Whoever does that will win," Bryant said.
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