Results tagged “Celtics” from The Sports Desk

It was announced this morning that Staples Center will no longer be open for fans to watch the Lakers-Celtics games on TV from Boston. This is a response to the fights in the stands (much viewed on YouTube and much blogged-on) during game 2 on June 8. A press release from Staples Center and the Lakers said the decision was made "after meeting with law enforcement and city representatives" and cited "concerns for resources needed to ensure the safety of fans throughout Los Angeles on (game) nights." What do you make of all this? What does it say about L.A. fans? Click the "Comments" button and sound off.

Maybe that headline will satisfy the Celtics faithful.

Now that Boston has indeed shown itself to be the better team in the NBA Finals, blogger Eric Wilbur (click here) of the Boston Globe takes the opportunity to rib me for a pre-series column (click here) saying these Celtics aren't the intimidating "natural-born winners" that the 1960s and '80s Celtics were.

Wilbur writes: "Think the man [me] wants a re-do?"

No, thanks.

In the wake of the Lakers' collapse against the Celtics Thursday night, we're making a list of the most historic cases of Southern California teams snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Send your suggestions in a comment. What's the most painful memory? Dodgers beaten by Jack Clark -- or Joe Morgan, or Reggie Jackson? Angels stunned by Dave Henderson? Rams losing the Mud Bowl game to the Vikings? Kings tripped up by Marty McSorley's illegal stick? USC falling to Vince Young and Texas? An earlier Lakers loss to the Celtics? Or something else? With your help, we'll have the definitive list in Saturday's papers and at this Web site.

My Wednesday column was written from the Lakers-Celtics game. Steve Dilbeck and I huddled quickly at the end of the game, making sure we weren't writing the same angle, and it turned out we had ideas that complemented each other in a good-cop bad-cop kind of way. I wrote that the Lakers displayed the toughness to win despite not playing their best, while Steve wrote that they're still in trouble unless they play better than this.

My column follows ...

Marc Berman, who covers the Knicks for the New York Post, observes in his Knicks blog that sportswriters in Boston's two major newspapers were unanimous in picking the Celtics to beat the Lakers. This is unremarkable, since writers do tend to hear more from the hometown team and often are swayed by its optimism.

But this should make us all appreciate our own columnist Steve Dilbeck and the steely objectivity he displayed in his NBA Finals prediction column. Dilbeck picked the Celtics to win, even though that's not what most readers here wanted to hear.

Read on for Berman's complete blog item.

Now, if you're really feeling creative, pretend you were a sportswriter covering the game, and tell everybody what your lead would have been. Just a paragraph or two. Use the Comments section.

We're as ready as the Lakers and Celtics are for the Lakers and Celtics to tip off tonight. Here in the sports department, we've been gameplanning for the NBA Finals for a couple of weeks now.

You'll begin to see the results in eight pages of series preview material wrapping around the sports section in today's paper, followed by four pages of coverage wrapping around the sports section in the paper following each game. We've scheduled more in between, including news- and features-section stories to appeal to non-basketball fans, keepsakes and surprises.

Look for more Lakers posters in the next two Sundays' papers: this week, a poster honoring Lakers all-time greats, and next week, a celebration of this year's Lakers team.

A couple of thoughts ...

My Wednesday column is about how these Boston Celtics aren't the Celtics we're used to. How in fact nothing about the upcoming Lakers-Celtics series is as it was in the 1960s and '80s. And what that means for what we're going to see starting Thursday night. Read on. Then tell me what you think.

Lakers and Celtics fans will argue for the next couple of weeks about which franchise is the NBA's greatest. The easy answer is Boston because it has 16 championships, Minneapolis-Los Angeles 14. But I just dug up (from the Daily News computer archives) a column I wrote a few years ago that argues the Lakers are No. 1 because -- well, read it and find out. The column is after the jump. It's from June 4, 2001. On that day the Lakers were on their way to the second of three titles in a row. The numbers I cite are even more favorable for the Lakers now.