Lakers-Celtics to Hash out Bragging Rights to Forty Year Bitter Rivalry

June 2, 2008 on 5:27 pm | In Basketball |

By Michael Lazar

The last time that the Boston Celtics marched their team into the NBA Championships, Ronald Reagan was preaching about Microeconomics and his wife was making sure that all of the urinal cakes had her trademarked logo on them, “Just say no.” But this time everybody is gearing up for what is being lauded as the match-up of a century; one that pits two bitter and ancient rivals against each other for all of the marbles, and of course bragging rights that will beset their past forty plus years of rivalry. That’s right, the Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers have hated each other since the early 1960s.

But the lauding of such a coveted match-up does not just ride on the teams themselves, but rather, their star players. In this up-and-coming showdown, to be aired on ABC this Thursday following Jimmy Kimmel Live, it will be pitting two of today’s best basketball players against each other in a winner-takes-all rivalry game. Of course, I am talking about none other than Paul Pierce against Kobe Bryant—the two leaders of the East and West powerhouse teams that have hated each other for almost half a century.

Well now they get to prove who has the better team. Who is better stacked and ready to take it all when the final buzzer is ringing? And you will not hear the folks over at ABC complaining too much about it either. After suffering a lack of viewer interest during the NBA Championship last season, they could not be any happier that these two teams are set to battle it out in a no-holds-barred, rivalry rematch that has been nearly twenty years in the making.

Just ask Doug White, the acquisition director at ESPN, who in a Sunday interview with the Hollywoodreporter.com had this to say about the ratings frenzy that this classic 1987 rematch creates: “To get a match-up between two of, arguably, the most storied franchises in the league is really a great opportunity for us, and a great opportunity for the fans to see some great basketball.”