Ghost Stories

Who's afraid of the Celtics curse, the Celtics curse, the Celtics curse? Oh yeah, all Lakerdom.

It's been 21 years since the last Lakers-Celtics Finals, but we aren't reliving that 1987 series, the Lakers are learning to their dismay.

By 1987, the rivalry had swung toward the Lakers, who took a 3-1 lead, winning Games 1 and 2 in the Forum by 13 and 19 points, pulling out Game 4 in the Boston Garden on Magic Johnson's "junior, junior skyhook."

That effectively settled that, signaling the end of the Celtics' reign that had started 30 years before, in which they won 16 titles.

Unfortunately for the Lakers, this isn't like 1987, or even 1985, when they made a dramatic comeback in Game 2 after the Memorial Day Massacre.

So far, this is more like the 1984 Finals, which any Laker shudders when he remembers.

In the long-awaited continuation of the Johnson-Larry Bird rivalry that began in the 1979 NCAA tournament, the Lakers looked like the better team, winning Game 1 in the Garden, leading Game 2, 113-111, with the ball.

That was when Gerald Henderson stole James Worthy's looping pass in the backcourt and laid it in with 13 seconds left, forcing an overtime that the Celtics won.

Back at the Forum, the Lakers then put it to them, 137-104, in Game 3, prompting Bird to call out his teammates: "We played like a bunch of sissies."

Game 4 was the one in which Kevin McHale clotheslined Kurt Rambis.

The Lakers still had a five-point lead in the last minute of regulation, blew it and lost in another overtime.

After that, a shaken Pat Riley told his players to return blow for blow, the pace slowed, and the Celtics went on to win in seven games.

In the days before charter flights, the Lakers had to stay over in Boston after losing Game 7 as Celtics fans celebrated wildly. As far as the Lakers were concerned, they might as well have been in the midst of a convention of witches riding around on broomsticks and conjuring spells.

Riley and his wife, Chris, stayed up all night in their hotel with assistant Bill Bertka and his wife. Riley called it "the longest night of my life."

Johnson stayed up with his friends, Isiah Thomas and Mark Aguirre, went home, shut himself in and wouldn't even talk to his mother on the phone.

"It was just heartbreaking," Johnson said later. " . . . We knew we were better than them, and to lose to them! But when we got out of there, we learned a valuable lesson. Only the strong survive, and that's something we didn't know until then.