An epic battle between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers

We saw An Epic Battle on the ABC network last night.

It was the NBA final between two titans of the game knotted at three games each — The Boston Celtics and The Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers had never before won a game seven in all their contests against the Celtics. So this was going to be good.

But … the Lakers had home court advantage! Surely that was a good thing, right? Maybe … maybe not. And Boston … well, the determination of Boston would surely get the job done, no? A very realistic idea. But which Laker team would show up? Which Boston team? The good ones … or the bad ones?

As it turned out, it was a trade off. Both teams, the good and the bad, showed up for … both teams. There were moments of brilliance for Boston, who looked as if they could do no wrong at times. That team left the Lakers floundering. But … there were moments where the Lakers went on outstanding runs … and there was nothing the Celtics could do about it.

In the end, it would come down to the end. The very end … the very last.

After all, that’s what makes An Epic Battle.

And if there’s anyone out there says they would’ve wanted it to go down any other way, they’re lying to you. This was one of the truly historic contests in the annals of sports history. Each and every edge-of-your-seat moment of it.

“This one is by far the sweetest, because it’s them,” Kobe Bryant confessed when asked how he felt about this contest with the Celtics. “This was the hardest one by far.”

You better believe it was. It was hard because no one really played that well. A lot of the shooting attempts were atrocious. The free throwing was suspect. For both teams.

The difference in the game didn’t finally come until well into the fourth period of play. That’s when the Lakers decided to give up their hideous offense displayed throughout most of the contest and got the gumption to tie the score, the first time that happened the entire night. Then Kobe came in and finally put the Lakers ahead with free throws. Thereafter, they scraped and clawed their way right down to the final buzzer, with plenty of close calls tossed in for good measure, making it a truly Epic Battle.

If you missed this game, you missed history being made. You missed seeing a classy Celtics team ultimately come up short while battling a struggling, unconfident Laker team.

And the Lakers? They beat themselves up last night. Game 7 jitters and shortcomings aplenty are what they fought against. Luckily, they let up on themselves for a few moments in the end to relight their fire and conquer that monkey straddling their backs.

Excellent, excellent contest, Celtics and Lakers. It was a privilege to witness it.

Clacked by Michael Noble
on Jun 18, 2010 @ 09:00 EST5EDT