EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — The routine is well established. The media mob, armed with cameras, tripods, tape recorders and, yes, even some old-fashioned notepads, gathers in a small room leading to the Los Angeles Lakers’ practice court at the team’s training facility here.
Like bulls in a pen waiting to charge, they are poised for the moment when PR director John Black swings open the door and turns them loose. The primary targets are always the same: Kobe Bryant first, then coach Phil Jackson, and on to Lamar Odom or Derek Fisher or Pau Gasol.
But not Sunday. The days ahead will offer plenty of opportunities to dwell on the 2008 NBA Finals, the renewal of Lakers-Boston Celtics after 21 seasons, starting Thursday. Sunday was a day for nostalgia. Sunday was a day for Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a day to dwell on classic Lakers-Celtics.
So the Hall of Fame center proved to be the first magnet for the media army. Surrounded like he had been in his playing days, Abdul-Jabbar was asked to relive the moment when he dropped his normally stoic demeanor after hitting a sky hook with a minute to play in Game 6 of the 1985 Finals, all but clinching the Lakers’ first championship triumph over Boston in nine tries. Abdul-Jabbar, a big grin on his face, ran down the Boston Garden court that night, arms spread, fists clenched.
“A lot of years of frustration for our franchise and for me personally were over,” he recalled. “The chance to get that monkey off our back and finally beat them was very important for our franchise.
“People enjoyed the way the rivalry evolved in the ’80s. We didn’t start out going head to head. We won a championship, they won a championship, then we won again. Then we started playing them for the championship. So we were both able to first establish ourselves as premier teams.”
Even before that, Abdul-Jabbar had experienced the challenge of trying to beat the NBA’s most successful team and the disappointment at failing to do so.
“I played against the Celtics in the Finals in 1974 (as a member of the Milwaukee Bucks) and we weren’t able to get it done because we had some injuries,” he said, the major casualty being Oscar Robertson. “We thought we had the better team, but we didn’t win the world championship (losing in seven games).”
To triumph finally in 1985, the Lakers had not only to survive against the Celtics, but against their rabid fans as well. Especially the ones who kept setting off fire alarms in the Lakers’ hotel in the wee hours of the morning. The Lakers changed hotels, but the fans kept finding them.
“I had to get up one morning at 4:30,” he said, “because the alarms were going off.”
Kobe Bryant was only 6 and living in Italy when the Lakers and Celtics first met in the Finals in the 1980s. But, with his grandfather sending him tapes of the games, he was able to watch every minute. And he hasn’t forgotten.
“I remember everything about those series like it was yesterday,” he said. “All the plays. I used to watch those tapes my grandfather sent me over and over.
“What they had then was truly magical. What we are trying to do now is make our own mark in history. Hopefully we can continue to perform well as the years go on and continue the legacy of the Lakers and the Celtics.”
Bryant said there were would be one big difference from those old series and this year’s edition: the physical nature of the play. One of the enduring images from the ’80s is the flying headlock Kevin McHale put on Kurt Rambis, sending the Laker forward crashing to the floor.
“That’s the intensity of what it used to be,” Bryant said. “You try that now, you’d be suspended for a week.”
As a kid, did Bryant hate the Celtics?
“Who didn’t?” he said.
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