Celtics are smoking -- without the cigars

By Mark Heisler

Dec. 30, 2007 12 AM PT

SACRAMENTO -- What rivalry?

The Celtics are coming, all right, and they’re no obligatory preseason feel-good story anymore but their old green monster selves.

Early as it is, Boston, with a 25-3 record, looks less like the merely great Larry Bird teams of the ‘80s than the all-conquering Bill Russell teams that dispatched the Jerry West-Elgin Baylor Lakers in six NBA Finals in the ‘60s.

As if from instinct, the press (hello) is starting to awaken old rivalries, but at the moment, the hype is well ahead of the reality.

It’s true, Celtics are always Celtics and Lakers are always Lakers (ask Kevin McHale, the Minnesota VP who sent Kevin Garnett to Boston for Al Jefferson, rather than to the Lakers for Andrew Bynum.)

On the other hand, these aren’t your father’s or your grandfather’s Celtics.

Two of their Big Three, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, were born in California, grew up rooting for the Lakers and hated the Celtics.

For years after moving East, Pierce made a point of asserting his West Coast identity, wearing a Dodgers baseball cap that hardly enchanted Bostonians.

The coach isn’t an old Celtic but Doc Rivers, whose Atlanta Hawks lost two playoff series to Boston in the ‘80s. Rather than embodying Celtic tradition, Rivers remembers what losing to them -- and hearing about it -- was like.

“Well, they inspired heartbreak for me,” Rivers said last week at the start of their Western trip.

“You respected them, but you disliked them because they felt they were better back then. And they let you know it, so that bugged you. And I think it bothered you more because you couldn’t do anything about it.

“Obviously, we’re not there because we haven’t won anything.”

That’s another difference.

The old Celtics lived to proclaim their superiority, from Red Auerbach’s victory cigars to Bird’s braggadocio.

(Not that they were alone. The Showtime Lakers set out to intimidate teams from the moment they ran out behind Magic Johnson, who affected a look so haughty, he seemed annoyed at opponents for taking up his time.) The Celtics had good teams and humble teams, but never at the same time . . . until now.

Last week, Allen not only discounted their chance of winning 70 games this season, he said talking about it would be “a slap in the face of the other teams.”

Rivers hasn’t gone three sentences since training camp without noting, “We haven’t won anything.”

Rivers’ humility extends to pointing out his team isn’t battle-tested like “the Detroits and Clevelands of the world who’ve gone through everything, Game 7s.”

Cleveland?

Of course, however humbly they carry themselves, there’s one problem:

THEY’RE STILL THE CELTICS!

During the Shaquille O’Neal-Kobe Bryant era, Phil Jackson delighted in upsetting Sacramento Kings fans, called them “rednecked semi-civilized barbarians.”

That was nothing compared with the old Celtics, who didn’t upset people, they haunted their lives.

No one took it harder than West, who later said of the Celtics’ Game 7 victory in 1969, “It got to the point with me that I wanted to quit basketball. It was a slap in the face, like ‘We’re not going to let you win. We don’t care how well you play.’ I always thought it was personal.”

Until the Lakers beat them in the 1985 Finals, the Celtics weren’t a team but a curse.

After losing to the Celtics in the 1984 Finals, despite having led in the last minute of the first four games, Lakers Coach Pat Riley did everything but hire an exorcist.

“I had to educate my players who the Celtics were,” Riley wrote. “I asked if anyone knew. Finally Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] raised his hand. He said the Celtics were a warring race of Danes who invaded Ireland.

“I had to explain that they were also a cunning secretive race. We had to learn to overcome the mythology of the Celtics.”

Of course, Riley, himself was, as the saying goes, as Irish as Paddy’s pig.

“I’ve gotten to know [Cedric] Maxwell, Chief [Robert Parish] and those guys pretty well,” Abdul-Jabbar says. “They’re great guys.

“It’s funny. Bill Walton and I at one point weren’t talking because of the rivalry. It was so silly. We laugh about it now.”

No one was laughing then.

Riley had the water barrel emptied in Boston Garden. After someone set off a 3 a.m. fire alarm at their hotel, Lakers officials were detailed to call the Celtics’ rooms in Los Angeles.

That was just life as the Celtics knew it, as they inspired similar loathing everywhere else, like New York in the ‘70s when Jackson was a Knick.

“We’d look up in the stands,” Jackson once told the Boston Globe’s Dan Shaughnessy, “and see the students from New York fighting the kids from Boston.”

Improved as the Lakers are, no one expects another Boston-Los Angeles Finals, even if Commissioner David Stern would burn incense and chant to see it.

As for the Celtics, as you may have heard, they haven’t won anything yet, but they’re looking good.

Garnett, Pierce and Allen couldn’t fit better if they were born triplets.

Their offense is good (No. 10 in scoring). Their defense is great (No. 1), packing the lane so determinedly, opponents have to pick their way through three of them to get to the basket . . . and one is usually KG.

Depth remains a concern, as does 21-year-old point guard Rajon Rondo.

Asked to account for Rondo’s improvement, Rivers joked, “The three guys he’s playing alongside,” but Rondo has been fine, shooting 52%.

Of course, when Detroit’s NFL-safety size Chauncey Billups overpowered Rondo on national TV this month in the Pistons’ upset in Boston, the Celtics were knee-deep in applications, with retired Gary Payton signaling his availability and Travis Best calling from Italy.

Nevertheless, the Celtics are at least the equal of any of the Western powers, who have towered over the East’s munchkins for years.

Best of all, they’re the Celtics again. It’s like the Dustin Hoffman line as Captain James Hook in “Hook,” the takeoff on “Peter Pan”:

“What would the world be like without Captain Hook?”

How did the NBA get along without the Celtics all these years?

In the ‘90s, it had Michael Jordan. After that, it didn’t get along too well.

Whoever’s in those green unies, it’s great to see you. If today’s Lakers-Celtics renewal isn’t really a rivalry, it will do for a start.

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(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

Celtics-Lakers rivalry

The Boston Celtics and Lakers have met in the NBA Finals 10 times, with the Lakers winning twice. Jerry West went winless in six trips to the Finals against Boston. The Celtics have won 16 championships and the Lakers 14 (*Minneapolis Lakers):

*--* CELTICS VS. LAKERS IN FINALS 1959 Finals Celtics win, 4-0* 1962 Finals Celtics win, 4-3 1963 Finals Celtics win, 4-2 1965 Finals Celtics win, 4-1 1966 Finals Celtics win, 4-3 1968 Finals Celtics win, 4-2 1969 Finals Celtics win, 4-3 1984 Finals Celtics win, 4-3 1985 Finals Lakers win, 4-2 1987 Finals Lakers win, 4-2 *--*

*--* CHAMPIONSHIP SEASONS CELTICS (16) LAKERS (14) 1956-57 *1948-49 1958-59 *1949-50 1959-60 *1951-52 1960-61 *1952-53 1961-62 *1953-54 1962-63 1971-72 1963-64 1979-80 1964-65 1981-82 1965-66 1984-85 1967-68 1986-87 1968-69 1987-88 1973-74 1999-2000 1975-76 2000-01 1980-81 2001-02 1983-84 1985-86 *--*

LAKERS VS. BOSTON

Tonight at

Staples Center, 7, FSN West

Kurt Streeter: Now he’s getting psyched up about the Lakers. D7