Fantasy matchup would be unreal

June 01, 2010|On basketball, Gary Washburn, Globe Staff

The Celtics have won nine of 11 NBA Finals against the Lakers, making this not so much a rivalry as a domination.

In the golden era of fantasy sports, when all-time teams can be pitted against each other via video screens, the Globe decided to match the 15 top Celtics and Lakers from those 11 Finals to see who would win a seven-game series.

That’s Bob Cousy vs. Magic Johnson. Bill Russell vs. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Paul Pierce vs. Elgin Baylor. And before we begin, this is just players who faced the Lakers or Celtics in a Finals, so that leaves out Dave Cowens for the Celtics and Shaquille O’Neal for the Lakers.

And these are the best 15 overall players from those 11 series, meaning position was ignored. The “rosters’’ are mostly made up of guards and forwards, given the lack of great centers besides Russell, Wilt Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar, and Robert Parish.

Here are the starting fives for each team:

Celtics: Cousy, John Havlicek, Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, and Russell.

Lakers: Magic, Jerry West, Kobe Bryant, Baylor, and Abdul-Jabbar.

For the Celtics, there could be some debate as to whether Pierce could replace Havlicek or Kevin Garnett could step in for McHale. Havlicek was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984, scored more than 26,000 points, and won all five Finals against the Lakers. While Pierce is a Celtics great and has one Finals victory over the Lakers, Havlicek has better credentials at this point.

McHale and Garnett are closer. They were equally talented in their prime and McHale actually traded Garnett to the Celtics as a general manager, so maybe he should get the nod on that alone. Since McHale was a lifelong Celtic and helped win three titles, we gave the nod to him.

The most pressing question about the Lakers was Abdul-Jabbar or Chamberlain, and Kareem won for two reasons: he beat the Celtics in two Finals and was a more productive player during those Finals. Chamberlain infamously asked out of Game 7 of the 1969 championship series against the Celtics and an angry Butch Van Breda Kolff did not put the big man back in the game. So on this team, he is relegated to the bench.

After further examination, the Celtics’ bench on this fantasy Finals team is a lot deeper than the Lakers’. Not only would you have several members from those storied Celtics teams of the ’60s, the Big Three also could come off the bench, as well as Dennis Johnson and Parish.

There would be little drop-off when Cousy got tired because DJ could spell him. Garnett could be teamed with Russell and nobody would score inside. Pierce and Bird could be an unstoppable 3-4 scoring tandem, and Parish could come off the bench to give Russell a breather.