Boston Celtics, World Champions

Embrace it. Ogle it. Relish it.
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But, above all, believe it.
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The Boston Celtics did not just win franchise championship No. 17 last night. They snatched it. They swallowed it. They demanded it.

The smell was unmistakable, wafting through the air some 15 feet from the Celtics’ bench as Paul Pierce joined in on the Gino dance and Kevin Garnett bounded up and down with joy.
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There were still two minutes and 21 seconds remaining in a Game 6 that for all intents and purposes had been over for at least an hour, the fans were chanting "Se-ven-teen" and coach Doc Rivers was still a few moments away from being doused with a bucket of orange Gatorade.
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Security guards were already lined up along the perimeter of the court, holding a long rope that would serve as a crowd control device for any ruffians who dared try to rush the celebration, and a fan nearby was holding up a sign that read: "Light One Up for Red."
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Somebody had already lit one up, though the source of the cigar smoke could not be located. And to me, that was just as well, because I’d like to close this season with just the slightest belief that the source of that smell was a ghost, a ghost with nine championship rings who will be able to rest in peace a little longer knowing that the man chasing ring No. 10, Lakers coach Phil Jackson, would be flying back to Los Angeles without the record for most NBA championships by a coach.

There were legendary Celtics sitting in the stands, with names like Russell, Havlicek, Heinsohn, Maxwell, Ainge, and White, who could all tell stories about the days when they touched the NBA championship trophy, sprayed champagne on each other, and watched Red Auerbach proudly puff on a victory cigar.

"You ever go to school," he said, finding the perfect words, "and you had a bully mess with you every day? I know everybody ain’t no tough guy here. It’s like that bully that you go to school every day [with] and you know when you get out of your mom’s or dad’s car, you know you’re going to see him as soon as you walk through the doors, he’s sitting there waiting to pat your pockets and mess with you. Then one day you say, ‘This is going to stop today!’ You walk in and as soon as the bully pats your pockets you lay his ass out and you see the expression on his face. You’re sorta shook because you know what, you just knocked the bully out and you don’t know how he’s going to come back. The next morning when you come in and he’s not there, it’s like a sigh of relief. It’s like getting rid of the bully. It’s like I knocked the bully’s ass out! I knocked his ass clean out. That’s what it feels like. For all y’all who ain’t been bullied, y’all got no idea what I’m talking about. But for y’all who have, you understand my story."

Kevin Garnett got the cover of the new Wheaties box, Breakfast of Champions edition, which was getting passed around the bowels of the New Garden long before the final buzzer, all thanks to the most laughable score in the history of championship clinchers.
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Ray Allen took a sharp first-half poke in eye, when he was already playing with the weight of a family crisis on his shoulders, but rebounded by tying one NBA Finals record for hitting triples and breaking another.
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Paul Pierce?
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Even on a night when the Boston Celtics might have been able to back up Allen’s claim that this team actually has a "Big 15" as opposed to just a supersized trio, with waves of Game 6 heroes lifting the fallen giants of basketball back to a perch they hadn’t graced for more than two decades, Pierce still found a way to be the face of it all Tuesday night.
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The night belonged to Garnett, Allen and even James Posey.
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A night they’ll never forget in Green Land might have belonged most to Rajon Rondo.
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Doc Rivers and Danny Ainge had a claim, too, when Boston set a new standard for how to finish off the Finals: Celtics 131, Lakers 92.
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Yet it was Pierce who deservedly swept all nine ballots in the Finals MVP voting. It was Pierce who fittingly clinched possession of two trophies with 17 points, 10 assists and what is believed to be the NBA’s first sideline sneak attack and sports-drink shower of a title-winning coach.

Season after season, year after year, eight playoffs and eight eliminations, Kevin Garnett would open his postmortems with pretty much the same moves: a flop into a folding chair, head bowed, a moment of reflection and finally, a sigh, his broad shoulders taking a ride with the great intake-outtake of air and the weight of failure full upon them.
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Garnett sighed Tuesday night, too, and even talked about it. Only this time, it was different. This sigh was welcome, a rite of passage, mission accomplished, an exhale to blow away the critics and the demons and the very large monkey on Garnett’s back, once and for all.

No NBA champion had ever done what they were doing. The 66-win Celtics had earned the right to play Game 6 on their home court after completing the biggest improvement — 42 games better than last year — in league history. They were becoming the first overhauled team to win the NBA championship in its initial year together; no team since the 1948-49 expansion Minneapolis Lakers had ever won a title with two newcomers among its top three scorers.
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And then, another whew! Along the way in the giddiness at TD Banknorth Garden, Garnett gave shout-outs to his roots in "’Sota,” Chicago and South Carolina, kissed the team logo at center court on the parquet floor, hollered "Anything’s possible!” to the rafters and laid his head on a staffer’s shoulder for what looked to be a few silent sobs — cries, like sighs, matter too. He even went gangster, a la Jimmy Cagney at the climax of White Heat, by yelling to his mother, Shirley, "Ma, top o’ the world! Top o’ the world!”

There were too many culprits to name for the Lakers, from the recurring frontcourt issues to Kobe Bryant’s continual shooting woes to another night of lethargy from the reserves. There will be plenty of time to ponder it all on the Lakers’ six-hour flight back home this morning.

And true to the team’s season-long character, even after installing trade acquisition Pau Gasol for injured Andrew Bynum, the Lakers got discouraged when they couldn’t score instead of redoubling their efforts on defense. That was a major reason they blew that 24-point lead in their historic Game 4 collapse.

Somewhere upstairs, the ol’ Redster wore a green robe, an unlit cigar clenched in his mouth. No doubt Red Auerbach, late architect of the original Boston dynasty, was joyful: His beloved Celtics have returned from pro basketball’s dead.

There really is no other way to describe the Lakers’ performance in Game 6 other than to say it was pathetic. It was a complete embarrassment to go into a game of that magnitude and not compete. There is absolutely no excuse for that, and it legitimately calls into question the character of some of their players.

With the outcome assured, Boston fans sang into the night as if they were in a pub on nearby Canal Street. They serenaded the newest champs in this city of champs, and taunted Kobe Bryant and his Lakers, who drowned in a green-and-white wave for 48 minutes.

Red Auerbach was not present for the moment in which the Boston Celtics restored their lost glory, but the party they threw Tuesday night at TD Banknorth Garden was unmistakably stamped with his outsize personality.

Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen weren’t interested in living up to the legacy of the Boston Celtics’ past Big Threes or the tradition-rich organization; they had more pressing concerns. They had accomplished enough individually but needed each other to get what each as missing most from their decorated résumés.

They’ll be creating space up in the rafters for another banner after the Celtics of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen completed the most remarkable one-year turnaround in NBA history with a 131-92 humiliation of the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night to capture the team’s 17th title on the 17th day of June.

"I know what it means to win a championship as a Celtic, and the place championships hold in the history of the franchise," Bird, now an executive with the Indiana Pacers, said Wednesday. "I’m also pleased for Danny Ainge, Doc Rivers and his staff, knowing where they were last year and then making the decisions to put them in position to win the team’s 17th title."

On a new parquet floor below aging championship banners, the Boston Celtics won their 17th NBA title and a first one — at last — for Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen — their Big Three for a new generation.