That cool outer demeanor revealed none of the urgency running through Bryant’s head. He knows
the singular stakes when the Lakers host the Boston Celtics in Game 7 of the
NBA finals Thursday night, and he isn’t afraid to raise them even higher.
“I’ve said the whole season, (if) you don’t win a
championship, it’s a failure,” said Bryant, who hopes to have his hand full
with a fifth championship ring. “It’s as simple as that.”
Nine months of preparation and eight weeks of postseason
play for the NBA’s two most decorated franchises will culminate in one
pressure-packed game at Staples Center. Such showdowns once occurred regularly
in the finals, including four previous trips to Game 7 for these teams, but
this is the finals’ first Game 7 since 2005 and just the third in 22 years.
It’s a dream scenario for kids playing hoops in their
driveway. It’s a crucible of history both for Bryant’s Lakers and the Celtics’
veteran core. It’s also simply an incredibly cool experience, according to the
players who are mentally able to savor it.
“I just love the pressure,” said Paul Pierce, who leads the
Celtics with 18 points per game. “I love the fact that I get to play against
the Los Angeles Lakers in a Game 7 on the road. I love the fact that if I don’t
win multiple championships that I probably won’t be mentioned among the other
guys in Celtic history that have done it before. That type of stuff motivates
me. That’s what the challenge is for me, every time I put on this Celtic
uniform.”
The rivalry’s history intermingles with the drama in Game 7.
The defending champion Lakers are going for their 16th banner, while Boston is
playing for its unprecedented 18th title in the NBA’s two most successful
franchises’ second finals meeting in three years.
Exactly two years to the day after the Celtics ended the
2008 finals with perhaps the most frustrating loss of Bryant’s career, he has
the ultimate chance to make things right.
“(When) I look back, years from now, or even when I was a
kid, (if) you’d talk about being in this situation, I’d be really excited,”
said Bryant, the series’ leading scorer with 29.5 points per game. “But when
I’m in the moment right now, I’ve got to play. I’ve got to focus on that. I
can’t focus on the hype about it.”
Although Boston has the rivalry’s Game 7 history on its
side, the Celtics also have plenty stacked against them after an embarrassing
89-67 loss in Game 6 Tuesday night.
Boston won’t have starting center Kendrick Perkins, who
sprained multiple ligaments in his right knee in the first quarter. The
Celtics’ starting five has never lost a playoff series, but that five must
change for Game 7.
Although Perkins is a role player next to Boston’s Big Three
and point guard Rajon Rondo, the Celtics must hope veteran Rasheed Wallace and youngster Glen Davis
can make up for Perkins’ inside defense and rebounding.
No visiting team has won an NBA championship in Game 7 since
the Washington Bullets did it in 1978, yet the Celtics are a whole lot more
worried about the Lakers than the Hollywood crowd.
“It’s all-out,” Boston’s Kevin Garnett said. “It’s for the
marbles, it’s for everything, all-out.
You save nothing. You leave nothing.”
It’s too soon to say where these finals will fit in the
rivalry’s annals. Although the games had been uniformly competitive before the
Lakers’ blowout win in Game 6, they haven’t been spectacularly played, with
gritty defense trumping offense in most of the major moments.
Ray Allen’s historic 3-point shooting barrage in Game 2, the
Celtics’ gritty victories in games 4 and 5, the Lakers’ blowout win in Game
6—all will be dwarfed by what happens in the deciding game.
“I guess it’s going to be another decade that people look
back and see the formation of this rivalry again,” Lakers coach Phil Jackson
said. “The ’90s was missed, and the ’70s was missed, but the ’60s and the ’80s
were big decades. It seems to skip a decade, doesn’t it?”
The Celtics have more experience in seventh games than the
Lakers over the past three years, playing in two deciding games in 2008 and two
more last year. Boston coach Doc Rivers thinks his club’s big-game toughness
mostly grew from those high stakes.
“It’s the ultimate players’ game,” said Rivers, a New York
guard when the Knicks lost Game 7 of the 1994 finals in Houston. “Unfortunately,
I’ve coached in a lot of them over the last few years—or fortunately. All the
things you’ve worked on all year, you have to do it, and execute it, and trust
and play.”
Los Angeles is in just its second Game 7 of the past three
seasons, but that’s because the Lakers have been better at avoiding trouble
while winning 10 playoff series since Pau Gasol joined them in 2008. When faced
with elimination Tuesday for the first time in these playoffs, the Lakers
responded with determination at least partially born from fear, according to
Gasol.
“I think about how bad and how much it would hurt if we
don’t come out as winners,” Gasol said. “I keep that thought in my mind
sometimes, just to understand that I have to do everything possible out there
to help my team in any way I can. You want to leave everything you have out
there, and compete as hard as you’ve ever competed.”
