Was that a lesson about life being unfair? Or about triumphing over adversity? Or about managing a superstar's minutes early in their career so injuries like this don't happen down the road? No, the lesson is that all professional sports (and some of the college ones), not just the WWE and the NFL, are scripted. Take a second to figure out where that truth blind sided you from (left field) and then think about it for a second. I can go as far back as you like, but let's start in the offseason of 2007 to see this plot line fully develop...
After the end of the 2007 NBA Finals (where the Spurs dismantled LeBron James and the Cavs without even breaking a sweat), the NBA was in a panic about how to make their product relevant, compelling and interesting to the general public. Stories about San Antonio and their machine like execution of an ingenious coaching system (post, slash, kick, hit the open shot and defend, how novel!) as well as the completely dull greatness of Tim Duncan were getting quite stale and it seemed as though nobody was anywhere close to challenging the Spurs for supremacy in the NBA. The Spurs were so good, in fact, that they made the regular season into their preseason, and the playoffs into a formality. Their methodical excellence and precision sucked all of the uncertainty and excitement out of basketball, which for everyone outside of San Antonio made basketball almost unwatchable.
Counterbalancing the rise of San Antonio to new heights of dominance in 2007 were the Boston Celtics, who lost nineteen freaking games in a row in 2007 and were the league's worst team that year. The Association's most storied and winningest franchise was on display with their pants around their ankles, making it hard to believe that the likes of Cousy, Russell, BIrd and Hondo ever donned the green and white. Though they were well stocked with some tantalizing young talent, the Celtics were more than twenty years removed from their last title and still seemed to be years away from raising banner number seventeen to the rafters, despite the best shot at a top pick in an especially loaded draft class. To make a long story slightly less long, the ping pong balls bounced with a sense of cruelty normally reserved for detainees in Eastern European prisons and Boston ended up with the fifth pick (the worst possible outcome for them) and we as Bostonians seemed to be doomed to only celebrate the three Superbowls and two World Series recently won by the Patriots and Red Sox forever. Little did we know that David Stern had big plans for the Celtics during the coming summer.
Up until now, everything that I've described could have easily been coincidence and as unscripted as your average episode of "Reno 911." What happened to the Celtics next makes it clear that the NBA is, in fact, as scripted as your average episode of "Survivor" or "the Hills." Magically, Ray Allen fell out of the sky and into Danny Ainge's lap on draft night, costing the Celtics only Delonte West, Wally Szczerbiak's reanimated corpse and the number five draft pick (which turned into Jeff Green). That was a lopsided deal to be sure, but there were questions about Allen's health and Seattle was currently acting out the movie "Major League" in real life, only without the Hollywood ending, so I wasn't that surprised by the deal. Still, the Celtics weren't an over-the-top team with the tandem of Allen and Pierce together.
And then, as Lloyd Bridges would say, it happened. In the summer of 2007, a perfect storm appeared from a confluence of separate plot lines that fit together perfectly and created the ideal climate for the NBA's return to glory. Kevin Garnett finally wanted out of Minnesota and had the nerve to say so. David Stern needed some way to reconnect the current manifestation of the Association with its golden age. Boston is a significantly larger media market than St. Paul and Minneapolis. Minnesota's GM Kevin McHale and Celtics GM Danny Ainge were old friends from that era. Boston had one legitimate young star left to trade (Al Jefferson), and the right combination of supporting pieces and expiring contracts to make the deal work. And finally, with Ray Allen and Paul Pierce on board, the Celtics were talented and experienced enough to be a good fit for the Big Ticket. Eureka!
This is where, I believe, Stern at least coaxed both teams in the right direction and started scripting the Celtics' return to glory. Using his influence, Stern pushed McHale to make the trade, lopsided as it was (how Ainge managed to hang on to Rondo in that deal I will never know). Suddenly, the Celtics had a championship quality core in the weakest division in all of professional basketball and a legit shot to burn a swath through the 2007-08 NBA season. Seeing the opportunity at their doorstep and with some coaxing from Commissioner Stern, no doubt, the Celtics went over the luxury tax and brought the final two pieces of the puzzle together in Eddie House and James Posey, and the Celtics were poised for an epic return to greatness.
Stern had laid the groundwork for the NBA's return to glory, but still, there was that pesky problem of San Antonio's stranglehold on the Western Conference. Though it was true at this point that the Celtics would compete with the Spurs in the Finals and thus improve the quality of the postseason play overall, Stern was dreading another rehashing of the 2005 Finals where Detroit and San Antonio slugged it out in a brutally defensive series, that despite being close close throughout was largely unwatchable for most casual basketball fans. Clearly, the Commissioner would have to take more drastic steps if he was to save his league from itself.
Enter Kobe Bryant and the Los Angeles Lakers. Here's where the coincidences go from being plausible to outright ridiculous. Why? Because during that offseason, Kobe Bryant was doing everything he possibly could to get out of Los Angeles. Unsatisfied with the quality of teammates around him and too impatient to wait several years for their young talent to develop further, Bryant made several trade demands in between publicly demeaning his teammates and sulking throughout the course of the summer. Rumors swirled, but the Lakers stood fast and resisted trading the league's best player for cents on the dollar in spite of threats of a holdout from their star player.
The rift between Kobe and the Lakers seemed wider than Eddy Curry's fat ass, yet somehow Bryant came into training camp happy and dedicated to sharing the basketball and making the teammates he had around him better, even if it meant sacrificing some of his own personal glory. How could this have happened? My theory is that David Stern came to Kobe with his preliminary idea for the upcoming season, which included his Lakers toppling the Spurs and heading to the Finals to face off with the new "Big 3" of the Boston Celtics. Having already engineered Derek Fisher's release from the Utah Jazz and reunion with the Lakers, Stern assured Kobe that his days of playing with Smush Parker and losing to the Suns in the first round of the playoffs were over. Stern guaranteed him an easy path there and an even shot at claiming his first title as the center of his team, an offer too rich and tantalizing for Kobe to pass up. At this point Stern also revealed to Kobe that he'd gone back in time and stolen Kareem's mojo Austin Powers style and injected it directly into Andrew Bynum, transforming the thus far unproven youngster into a beast of a center capable of going toe to toe with the best big men in the Association.
There was just one problem with all of this: the Celtics were too good. Like way too good. Playing perhaps the best defense the NBA has ever seen, the Celtics burned a swath through the regular season General Sherman style (yes, a civil war reference. Finally, my history degree is paying off!) and transformed into an unstoppable force that was poised to make the Finals as boring as they were with the Spurs dominating, only this team was backed by a horde of insufferable Bostonians instead of rowdy Texans (not sure which is worse, and I'm one of the insufferable Bostonians, what does that say?). The Celtics easily handled the Lakers twice during the regular season, in addition to becoming the first team in a while to sweep the dreaded Texas Triangle of Dallas, Houston (ending their 22 game winning streak in the process) and San Antonio on the road. In order to make the postseason more than a formality, the Lakers had to get better in a hurry.
Enter Pau Gasol. After losing Andrew Bynum for the year with an unfortunate knee injury (the jury's still out on whether or not this was scripted or just an unfortunate occurrence), the Lakers pulled off perhaps the most lopsided trade since acquiring Wilt the stilt from Philadelphia back in the 1960s. I know that the Grizzlies are a cost-conscious team and famously inept, but even so, there is no way that they would have traded their best player to the Lakers for nothing (Kwame Brown????????) unless David Stern somehow had a hand in the deal.
It's not very subtle, I know, but then again, subtlety has never been Stern's strong suit. Seeing the giant, gaping hole in the middle of the rotation, Stern had one of those moments where he said to himself, "my god, I'm going to have to go so far beyond the shenanigans 2002 Western Conference Finals or the 2006 Finals to get the match-up I want unless I can fix the Lakers. I know, give them Gasol!" And so it was that Pau Gasol came to Los Angeles and the Lakers were back on track to meet the Celtics in the Finals in what would no-doubt make for great television. This plan worked so well, in fact, that Stern only had to fix one game against San Antonio (no call on Derek Fisher's foul of Brent Barry, horrendously crappy officiating or conspiracy? You decide) for the Lakers to claim the Western Conference crown.
After months and months of meticulous planning and manipulation, Stern and the NBA had achieved their goal, a reprisal of the league's greatest rivalry, Celtics v. Lakers. Only Boston was way too good for the Lakers and proved it in the world's first six game sweep. Despite the predictions to the contrary from nearly everyone with a soapbox to stand on (Timmy Legs and Simmons, my hat's off to you for seeing the light), the Celtics dominated LA, burying them in game six with a barrage of relentless defense and three-pointers. If these Celtics had so thoroughly exposed Kobe as a flawed player and beaten LA so resoundingly without any experience playing together, the prospects of having a competitive NBA for the next three years were grim.
On the surface, the Lakers seemed to make a series of it, and the television was outstanding to be sure, however the 39 point loss in the clincher and the 20 point fourth quarter choke by LA were strong warnings to Commissioner Stern that something had to change. The Celtics were far too good to lose to this Laker squad, and to make matters worse, their fans got even more obnoxious and full of themselves, leaving David Stern scrambling for a solution. Using all of his cunning, Stern came up with yet another ingenious plan to take his suddenly revitalized league to the next level: let's have our two best players play each other the title! (like I said, subtlety isn't his strongest suit). And thus, the chain of events that culminated in KG's lingering injury were set in motion to secure a Cavs/Lakers Finals.
Cleveland's acquisition of Mo Williams along with Andrew Bynum's recovery and the Celtics' loss of James Posey (Stern engineered this one too, he made Ainge put the checkbook away) set the stage, but unfortunately it seemed as though the Celtics were determined to play even better than last year despite the improvements made by the rest of the elite teams in the Association. One mysterious knee injury later, the Celtics are now officially underdogs heading into this year's postseason. Despite getting the best basketball from Paul Pierce, Ray Allen and everyone else on the Celtics, the Celtics don't appear to have enough to beat the Cavs a seven game series that features four games in Cleveland.
For now, it appears as though Stern will get his wet-dream of a Finals, Kobe vs. LeBron. They've been at the center of the MVP debate this year (rightfully so) and it seems like a force stronger than fate is pushing them closer to a match-up in June. Boston will still compete valiantly and be spared a humiliating defeat in the Conference Finals at the hands of NBA officials, losing instead to a team that is legitimately better than the Celtics are. The deck has already been stacked, there will be no miracle ace on the river to save Boston's hopes of repeating as champions. I was skeptical all year long based on the quality of the opposition, but now it seems that I have almost no hope at all.
Am I angry at David Stern for writing us out of the drama so early? A little, but I understand that we had our shot last year and benefitted greatly from it. Now it's time for us as Celtic fans to root hard for our team and accept the inevitable defeat with grace and dignity (look those words up sometime before the Conference Finals). We're playing with house money at this point, expectations for success couldn't be lower. It's time to make the most of it, and for the Celtics prove that ubuntu is more than a word. This team has thrived on adversity and the past, and I expect nothing but their best effort for as long as they're in the playoffs. But it is already written that we are not to taste sweet victory again this June. So it goes.
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