What I took away most from our conversation was that he believes that Kobe winning his sixth ring would be a bigger deal than the Lakers tying the Celtics by winning their 17th. And while Kobe can’t win a sixth ring without the Lakers winning their 17th, there’s still a difference.
I asked Daniel Buerge who runs LakersNation’s Twitter account to poll their followers and ask which was a bigger deal to each of them. There were far more people who felt the Lakers tying the Celtics was a bigger deal but there were still a lot of people who felt that Kobe winning his sixth would be a bigger deal.
I got a little bit of an education that night. I learned that there was such a thing as Kobe fans who weren’t necessarily Lakers fans. Those were the people who were rooting for the Celtics to beat the Heat in last year’s Eastern Conference Finals. The ones who would rather see the Celtics win an 18th title than see LeBron win his first. But that’s not all I’ll take away from that night. More importantly, I learned that it was really just a generational issue.
There’s an entire generation of Lakers fans who couldn’t care less about the Celtics because it’s hard to have a deep-seeded and passionate hatred for a franchise that was a laughingstock for most of their lives. It’s true that the Celtics had a losing record in 11 of the 14 seasons between 1993-94 and 2006-07 — especially when the Lakers won five championships between the last two Celtics titles (then added another two afterward, just for good measure).
What I’m trying to say is that it’s not your fault. It’s our fault. As Peter Tosh once sang, “You can’t blame the youths of today.” It reminded me of this music review of Public Enemy’s classic album “It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back” done a few months ago by an intern at NPR. Can I really be mad at a kid who thinks Drake is better than Public Enemy? It’s my generation’s fault for allowing this punk to go through life thinking that it was okay for a man to admit such an opinion out loud.
It wasn’t only that I grew up during a time in which the Celtics were relevant but I was also schooled on why, as a Lakers fan, it was my civic duty to hate the Boston Celtics. I wasn’t alive to suffer the heartbreak of watching the Celtics win seven straight NBA Finals over the Lakers. That pain was thrust upon me like religious guilt.
I can’t think of a better way to educate you all on why you should hate the Lakers than with the words of ESPN’s resident Lakers-hater, Bill Simmons. If this doesn’t ignite your Celtics hatred than, I’m sorry, you’re a lost cause:
Magic’s Lakers barely squeeze through as a dynasty because they overlapped with Bird’s Celtics. Can you have two dynasties at the same time? Isn’t the point of a “dynasty” that you conquered everyone else over a prolonged period of time? And also, the ’86 Celtics were better than any single Lakers team over that stretch. In the end, I made them a dynasty just because of those nine Finals appearances — an incredible number, especially given how competitive the NBA was in the 1980s.
If that doesn’t make your blood boil then blame my generation for not passing on the hatred that was instilled in each of us. First of all, how the hell does a team that made it to nine NBA Finals in 12 years, winning five of them, “barely squeeze through” as a dynasty?
How is this guy able to live in L.A. without needing a full-time bodyguard after writing these things as facts and not just horrible opinions? He goes on to say, as fact and not opinion, that Len Bias’ death is the only thing that stopped the Celtics from snatching the 80s away from the Lakers.
I’m surprise he wasn’t forced to move out of the city after he wrote this scathing article trying to discredit Kobe’s first championship without Shaq. If you’re into torturing yourself, go ahead and read him glorifying Kobe’s number of shot attempts while just barely glossing over the 7.4 assists per game he averaged over the five Finals games, including eight in each of the first four games. He also does a nice job reminding us of the role Trevor Ariza played in the 2009 Playoffs. In doing so he makes the case, albeit unknowingly, for what a difference a healthy Ariza would have made against Finals MVP Paul Pierce the year before. As you might recall, the Lakers were forced to guard Pierce with Vlad Radmanoic and Luke Walton.
So if you’re scoring at home, Simmons believes an alive Len Bias and a healthy Kendrick Perkins in 2010 equals guaranteed championships but Trevor Ariza and Andrew Bynum’s health wouldn’t have made a difference in 2008.
If that’s not bad enough, here’s what he wrote about George Mikan’s Lakers teams reluctantly being included on his list of dynasty teams:
Mikan’s Lakers (six years, five titles), who have to be included even though they thrived before things like “the shot clock,” “dunking” and “multiple black guys on each team.”
On multiple occasions Simmons has made it a point to try and exclude the championships the Lakers won while in Minneapolis. Here’s what he wrote in July:
A 17th title for the Lakers, which would technically match Boston’s 17 titles even though five of those Laker titles happened in Minneapolis in the 1940s and 1950s. If you count those five, that’s EXACTLY like adding Seattle’s 1979 NBA title to Oklahoma City’s ongoing total … right? That won’t stop Lakers fans from pretending that they “tied” Boston even if they didn’t. I’m already pissed off and it hasn’t even happened yet.
So he believes that Mikan’s titles are invalid because of the absence of the shot clock, dunking, and black players. But, according to Simmons, if we must consider them legitimate titles, they shouldn’t be included in the Lakers grand total because they were won in a different city.
Translation: Bill Simmons is scared of the inevitable and has already started to discredit said inevitability preemptively. Who does that? Bill Simmons does that with absolutely no regard of how embarrassed other Celtics fans should be by it.
Next Page: Simmons’ Reality Is Actually Fantasy
In his mind, Mikan and the Lakers lose credibility because of the absence of those aforementioned things but makes no mention of the fact that the Celtics first NINE championships, more than half (!), were won in an NBA with only eight or nine teams TOTAL and eight of those nine title teams only had to play two playoff rounds in order to win a championship.
On what planet would those five Lakers championships won in Minneapolis be any less credible than those first eight won by the Celtics?
I’ll make you a deal, Bill. You forget about those first eight Celtics banners that were won when winning a title was akin to just MAKING IT to today’s conference finals and I’ll forget about those five the Lakers won in Minneapolis. I should also mention that all but one of the Lakers 11 championships since moving to L.A. were won in an NBA with at least 22 teams in it. So the Celtics may have won one more titles than the Lakers overall but there’s no question which team’s are more impressive.
Simmons was born just a few months after the Celtics won their 11th title in 1969. At the time, the Celtics led the Lakers 11-5 in titles and the Lakers were still three years away from winning their first championship in Los Angeles. Not only had the Celtics won six more but seven of those 11 championships came against the Lakers. None of those five titles the Lakers won in Minneapolis came against the Celtics.
So in the 43 years since Simmons was born, the Lakers have won 11 titles, 10 of which he is old enough to remember quite clearly. Conversely, the Celtics have won just six during that span. So he can talk all he wants about superiority, just know that during his lifetime he has witnessed almost twice as much agony rooting against the Lakers than he has celebrated while rooting for the Celtics.
Speaking of agony, have you noticed that he’s never pointed out that, in three of the five seasons of the Kevin Garnett Era, the Celtics were eliminated in a series in which they held a 3-2 advantage and went on to lose the next two games? Or that they had double-digit leads in each of those Game 7s? Nor has he ever mentioned that they’re 11-15 overall in games in which they have a chance to clinch a series.
Compare that to the Lakers, who during that same span, lost more potential series-clinching games against Denver in last season’s playoffs than they did in the previous four seasons combined. Comparatively, over that same stretch the Lakers are 13-3 with a chance to win a series. Remember that the next time someone tries to talk to you about Kendrick Perkins’ knee. Simmons loves to point out Kobe’s 6-for-24 shooting in Game 7 but never mentions that Kobe and Pau combined to outrebound Garnett in that game, 33-3.
I remember what it was like losing to the Celtics in the 1984 Finals and hearing about how the Celtics owned the Lakers. That win had improved the Celtics record to 8-0 against the Lakers in the Finals. I remember the taunts like they were recurring nightmares. I remember the laughter at our expense. I remember hearing Jerry West fight back tears while talking about never beating the Celtics and winning the 1969 Finals MVP despite being on the losing team — the only one to ever lose an NBA Finals Game 7 at home.
I applaud Jason Terry for trying to reignite a rivalry that seems to be on life support. Here’s a recent interview with Red Auerbach’s daughter, Randy, where she talks about her hatred for the Lakers and what it’s like living in L.A. with that hatred. Just like I loved it when Sasha Vujacic said he wouldn’t wear green after losing to the Celtics in 2008. If you don’t have a deep-rooted anger for the Celtics than do yourself a favor and fake it until you make it. It will make it that much sweeter when the Lakers pass a team that at one time held a 13-6 lead in titles.
Bill Simmons has a lot of power and, either knowingly or unknowingly, has used it to try and not only dictate that the sports world remember things how he wants them to but now he’s hell-bent on trying to retroactively rewrite history as well. He knows that most of his readers don’t remember 1986 so why not emblazon in their minds that they were the greatest team of all-time, right? The least I ask of him is that he put “I think…” or “In my opinion…” in front of those thoughts he likes to present to his readers as facts.
I won’t hold my breath. But at least we’ll always have this and this to hold us down in the meantime. So while I’m disappointed that the rivalry is a shell of it’s former self, I’m also not surprised the hatred is very much one-sided now. If a gorgeous woman leaves her fat and lazy husband for someone better, which one would you guess still thinks about the other?