Getty The Boston Celtics vs. LA Lakers rivalry just isn't what it used to be.
The Boston Celtics travel to face the Los Angeles Lakers in one of five NBA games taking place on Christmas. The holiday is considered by many as the official start of the NBA season, and the league hypes up its slate of games.
The Celtics and Lakers are the third of five games on Christmas, with a scheduled tipoff at 5 p.m. Although the league is doing its best to pump up a Celtics vs. Lakers game, it just doesn’t have the same juice it used to have.
Celtics vs. Lakers Was a Heated Rivalry
June 6, 1984
Game 4 – NBA Finals
Kevin McHale introduces himself to Kurt Rambis
Today this would be a flagrant 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,……
Celtics win the game (129-125) and eventually go on to win the Championship
The NBA can try and build up the Celtics vs. Lakers these days, but it will never rival what took place in the 1980s.
Yes, the game was much different back then. The teams legitimately despised each other. Hard fouls were the norm. The Celtics owned the Eastern Conference, while the Lakers took care of the West. In each year of the 1980s, either the Celtics or the Lakers reached the NBA Finals. They squared off against each other in the championship round three times.
Celtics vs. Lakers was must-see TV.
The teams hated each other. Kevin McHale’s clothesline of Kurt Rambis changed the momentum of the 1984 NBA Finals and played a key role in Boston outlasting LA in seven games in the series.
McHale took down Rambis with a hard foul as the LA forward was driving in for a layup with the Lakers up 76-70 in the third quarter and holding a 2-1 series lead. Benches cleared. Tempers flared. No technical was called. The Celtics rallied to win the game and the series.
Nearly 35 years later, Rambis explained how he really felt about the play.
“You know, I would probably be in jail right now if I had been able to do what I wanted to do after he upended me,” Rambis said during a 2021 appearance on the “Showtime With Coop” podcast hosted by former Lakers guard Michael Cooper. “I was going after him. If you watch the tape, I’m headed right toward him. Worthy pushes me into the reporters, and I end up falling down. Larry Bird ends up helping me up.
“It’s just something you don’t do in basketball, so I was going after blood. If I had a clear path, I was going after him, so I may have gotten in a lot of trouble.”
Byron Scott Once Explained Why the Rivalry Will Never Be the Same
Former Lakers guard Byron Scott said that Celtics/Lakers rivalry was real. So was the hatred.
“The one thing everybody has to understand is it was a true rivalry,” Scott said during a 2022 episode of his “Off the Dribble” podcast. “It’s not like today. You don’t have the true rivalries in the NBA like you did back in those days.
“We didn’t play ball with those guys in the summer. We didn’t play high school ball with them, and we didn’t play AAU ball with those guys. Those guys hated us. We hated them.”
He also appeared on Cooper’s podcast and explained why there will never be a rivalry like the Celtics and Lakers of the ’80s. Scott said he understood how times have changed when he became coach of the New Orleans Pelicans.
He recalled a time when his point guard Chris Paul went out to dinner with Utah Jazz guard Deron Williams the night before playing against each other.
“I just don’t get it,” Scott said on the “Showtime With Coop” podcast. ‘If Boston was in town, me and Danny Ainge ain’t gonna have dinner together, and he ain’t gonna spend the night at my house. No way in hell. I don’t get that. The rivalries, they don’t exist like they did back in the day. That Boston Celtics/LA rivalry will the best and the last rivalry that we’ll ever see.”