Once Upon a Time, Bostonians Found Lakers Easy to Take

When it all started, you couldn’t hate the Lakers. How could you possibly hate Elgin Baylor and Jerry West?

Celtic fans had more feel, more basketball savoir faire, more common sense than that. They feared Elgin Baylor, the man who invented a new style of play from which all the Ervings and Jordans have borrowed freely. I mean, this man once scored 61 points in a playoff game against the Celtics. In their own building!

And when the game was over, Red Auerbach said that it’s a good thing Satch Sanders had done a good job on him or else he would have had a really big night.

And Jerry West. What clear-thinking individual could do anything but admire Jerry West?

Even (Celtic announcer) Johnny Most, who generally regards opponents the way Sinatra views the press, couldn’t find anything bad to say about Jerry West. Remember what Johnny called him? Gentleman Jerry. You can be certain the Celtic announcer never calls ol’ No. 32 Magnificent Magic.

Celtic fans used to feel sorry for West. By the time the Celtics had beaten the Lakers for the sixth time in 1969, some of them were feeling sorry enough to say: “Gee, maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if we lost and West finally got his ring.”

Make no mistake. Of all the Celtic opponents in their 39-year history, Jerry West is the most revered, the one who, in the eyes of the Boston Garden faithful, was the foe who most deserved the honor of wearing the sacred green and white uniform.

There was a certain gentility about the rivalry in the old days. The Sports Arena sure looked nice on TV. Every telecast began with a picture of the counter over the turnstile tallying the attendance. We’d be guaranteed to get two or three shots of Doris Day cheering from her front-row seat. How threatened could you be by a team whose chief celebrity patron was Doris Day?

Through it all, the Lakers fought fairly and squarely. True, they did have the man Johnny Most had nicknamed Roughouse Rudy LaRusso, but that wasn’t too bad because, after all, he had gone to Dartmouth, and it was generally assumed he would rather have played for the Celtics, if given a chance.

So everything in this rivalry was pristine until the Lakers abandoned the Sports Arena and moved about six miles south and three miles west to the Forum.

The Forum. Ugh.

The Forum was Jack Kent Cooke’s creation. It is a building utterly without value. It is no good for basketball. It is no good for hockey. It is no good for concerts.

Having no decent utility value, therefore, it was the perfect place for Wilt Chamberlain.

If anything turned the rivalry from gentility into hostility, it was the advent of Wilt Chamberlain, the all-time Celtic arch-villain. A crass owner playing in a crass building had now hired a crass player. We are speaking from the perspective of a Celtic fan, remember. And so the rivalry really began.

Then there were the balloons. Cooke had them tied to the Forum ceiling before Game 7 in 1969. They would be released in celebration as soon as the game was over. But Chamberlain asked out of the game in the fourth quarter--he had a boo-boo--and the Celtics won. Even today, if you want to get a laugh in greater Boston, just say, “I wonder if the balloons are still there?”

The Celtics and Lakers never met in a final series during the ‘70s, but that doesn’t mean the Celtic fans couldn’t stoke the fires by watching the Lakers from afar on TV. What gruesome sights they saw--Forum welcomes, dancing girls, sitcom stars and assorted Beverly Hills high rollers sitting in pathetically overpriced court-side seats. Yuck, all of it.

The Garden fans took it all in. They heard the 1971-72 Laker team hailed as the greatest of all-time. (“Hey, did they sneak Russell into uniform when I wasn’t looking?”)

They noted the arrival of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, another villainous type being laughably compared to the sainted Russell. Comparing the 89th-best rebounding center of all time to Russell? Oh, puh-leeze.

Playoff games or no playoff games, the rivalry kept building. When Magic Johnson and Larry Bird came out together in 1979, what happened? The one with the lunch pail and blue collar went to Boston, where he lives in a simple house and mows his own lawn. The one with the smile went to L.A., where he lives in Bel Air, drives a spiffy car, and lounges by his swimming pool. Perfect.

The Boston guy continues to go to games because he likes the product. He battles traffic, pays $7 to park, if he can find a spot, and enters a building without air-conditioning. He has never seen a cheerleader or dancing girl besmirch his beloved parquet floor, and hopes he never will.

As for Dancin’ Barry, he would be tackled by 700 people simultaneously and dragged off to the shark tank at the New England Aquarium were he ever to attempt his woeful act in the Garden. Has anybody out there ever noticed he can’t even dance?

It’s all gone wrong out there. Goodby, Doris Day and her bouffant hairdo. Hello, Jack Nicholson and the million-dollar leer. The fox hunt has gone over to the gang war.

The Celtics no longer play for themselves. In the minds of the Celtics’ fans they play for Truth, Justice and the American Way. To paraphrase Calvin Coolidge, the business of the Celtics is basketball. That’s all a Garden fan asks for, or expects.

I know this much: If Dancin’ Barry walked onto a court where Jerry West was playing, Gentleman Jerry would walk off.