Celtics are smoking -- without the cigars

SACRAMENTO -- What rivalry?

The Celtics are coming, all right, and they're no obligatory preseason feel-good story anymore but their old green monster selves.

Early as it is, Boston, with a 25-3 record, looks less like the merely great Larry Bird teams of the '80s than the all-conquering Bill Russell teams that dispatched the Jerry West-Elgin Baylor Lakers in six NBA Finals in the '60s.

As if from instinct, the press (hello) is starting to awaken old rivalries, but at the moment, the hype is well ahead of the reality.

It's true, Celtics are always Celtics and Lakers are always Lakers (ask Kevin McHale, the Minnesota VP who sent Kevin Garnett to Boston for Al Jefferson, rather than to the Lakers for Andrew Bynum.)

On the other hand, these aren't your father's or your grandfather's Celtics.

Two of their Big Three, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen, were born in California, grew up rooting for the Lakers and hated the Celtics.

For years after moving East, Pierce made a point of asserting his West Coast identity, wearing a Dodgers baseball cap that hardly enchanted Bostonians.

The coach isn't an old Celtic but Doc Rivers, whose Atlanta Hawks lost two playoff series to Boston in the '80s. Rather than embodying Celtic tradition, Rivers remembers what losing to them -- and hearing about it -- was like.

"Well, they inspired heartbreak for me," Rivers said last week at the start of their Western trip.

"You respected them, but you disliked them because they felt they were better back then. And they let you know it, so that bugged you. And I think it bothered you more because you couldn't do anything about it.

"Obviously, we're not there because we haven't won anything."

That's another difference.

The old Celtics lived to proclaim their superiority, from Red Auerbach's victory cigars to Bird's braggadocio.

(Not that they were alone. The Showtime Lakers set out to intimidate teams from the moment they ran out behind Magic Johnson, who affected a look so haughty, he seemed annoyed at opponents for taking up his time.) The Celtics had good teams and humble teams, but never at the same time . . . until now.

Last week, Allen not only discounted their chance of winning 70 games this season, he said talking about it would be "a slap in the face of the other teams."

Rivers hasn't gone three sentences since training camp without noting, "We haven't won anything."