A look back at Lakers-Celtics finals

Times staff writer Chris Dufresne recaps the Lakers’ nine finals losses (and two victories) against the Celtics:

1958-59: Land of lakes

If we’re going to claim five NBA titles from Minneapolis we also have to absorb this 4-0 sweep. It was Boston’s second title for Red Auerbach and Bill Russell. The Lakers no longer had George Mikan but were led by Elgin Baylor, who averaged 25 points and 15 rebounds as a rookie.

If only defending NBA champion St. Louis had won Game 7 of the Eastern finals.

1961-62: The first cut

OK curse: On your mark, get set, go! Boston needed a last-second shot by Sam Jones just to beat Philadelphia to get out of the East. The Lakers led the finals, 2-1 and 3-2. Baylor scored 61 points in Game 5 in Boston. In Game 7, in Boston, with the game tied, the Lakers’ Frank Selvy missed an eight-foot baseline shot in the final seconds that could have brought the title. Boston won in overtime.

Selvy, in college at Furman, had once scored 100 points in a game. But he couldn’t get two when it counted. “I would trade all my points for that last basket,” he said.

1962-63: Tip of the hat

Blame Oscar Robertson, whose Cincinnati kids, out of the East, couldn’t take Boston out in seven. The Celtics then deep six-gamed the Lakers in an unfortunate career overlap that involved John Havlicek’s first year in Boston and Bob Cousy’s last. Russell (that guy again) dominated the clinching game at the Sports Arena.

Jim Murray described gate-keeper Russell after the series as “the only man I know who seems to grow two more sets of arms when he gets back under his own basket.”

1964-65: Wounded knee

Boston won in five games but Lakers fans will bellyache about Baylor not playing after injuring his knee against Baltimore in early April. West averaged 40.6 points in 10 playoff games but it wasn’t enough against Russell and Co.

Boston claimed Game 7 of the conference finals when Havlicek swiped an inbound pass to clinch a one-point win. Celtics’ announcer Johnny Most described it as “Havlicek stole the ball!! Havlicek stole the ball! Havlicek stole the ball.”

It was a decent play.

1965-66: Seeing Red

Another seventh-game dagger as Boston won its eighth straight championship. Auerbach pulled a genius move after losing the home opener by announcing Russell would replace him as coach at the end of the season. Boston won three straight games and the seventh in Boston.

Wait, the Lakers “held” Russell to only 32 rebounds in the clincher, and still lost?

Lakers’ Coach Fred Schaus said it all afterward: “I would have loved to shove that victory cigar down Red Auerbach’s throat.”

1967-68: Not all fabulous

Jack Kent Cooke was the Lakers’ new owner, Butch van Breda Kolff was the new coach, and the team had moved into new digs, the Fabulous Forum.

Same old result: Boston won in six.

Loser’s lament: West played with a bad hamstring. Havlicek scored 40 in the deciding game, with Bailey Howell chipping in 30 and Larry Siegfried tossing a few scoops of dirt on the pile.

1968-69: Balloon boys

“Take it, take another little piece of my heart.” — Lakers fan Janis Joplin.

Adding Wilt Chamberlain to the lineup of West and Baylor assured the Lakers of finally overcoming the sagging, aging, decrepit Celtics, who finished fourth in the East.

Or not.

The Lakers led the series, 2-1, and were up a point very late when Jones offered a prelude to Don Nelson’s Jiffy Lube shot when he rimmed home the winning basket. The Lakers won Game 5 in L.A. but West pulled his hamstring (again!).

After Boston tied it up, 3-3, Lakers returned to the Forum, where the owner had ordered balloons, ready for release, to the rafters. Russell and Celtics took note … and exception.

“Most of the years we played, they were better than we were,” West would say. “But in ’69 they were no better. Period. We were better.”

Mal Florence’s lead in The Times summed it up: “It seems that the Lakers are not destined to defeat the Boston Celtics in the NBA championship finals.”

The balloons were donated to a children’s hospital.

1983-84: Un-Worthy

The Lakers were better. Larry Bird said it himself: “To be honest, they should have swept.”

Seconds from going up 2-0 in the series, James Worthy’s cross-court pass was intercepted by Gerald Henderson, whose basket tied the score. Boston won in overtime, also took Game 4 in OT, and blew the Lakers over in seven.

On the laundry list of things to remember: Kevin McHale’s clothesline hook of Kurt Rambis in Game 4.

Chick Hearn used to say: “No harm, no foul, no blood, no ambulance.”

Surprise to Lakers fans the next day: the sun came up.

1984-85: It really happened

The Lakers finally broke the jinx, beating the Celtics, in Boston, after eight finals losses and 10,000 eye pokes dating back to 10,000 lakes. Scott Ostler of The Times wrote what everyone was thinking: This was for “all the players and fans, Minnesota and Los Angeles, who have choked on a quarter-century of Red’s cigar smoke. The sun is shining. Lift one to the rafters.”

1986-87: Just for good measure...

Raise another one to the rafters. After Magic’s “baby sky hook” in Game 4 helped seal the series in 6, you’re thinking beating the Celtics might be contagious. Jim Murray wrote, “The Celtics looked in poor light like Bonaparte’s retreat.” Little did we know. The teams wouldn’t meet in the finals again for two decades, where it all became a cigar-smokey haze … a ‘60s flashback.

2007-08: Curses again

The Lakers blew a 24-point lead, at home, in Game 4 and then got routed by 39 in the close-out Game 6 to hand Boston it’s 17th title.

Not that any of that, in the grand scheme of existentialism, means anything.

chris.dufresne@latimes.com