Boston Celtics Basketball Team

HOUSTON -- It took the team with the NBA's best record to end the Houston Rockets' 22-game winning streak. Kevin Garnett and the Boston Celtics stopped the remarkable run emphatically Tuesday night, pulling away in the second half for a 94-74 victory. The Rockets hadn't lost since Jan. 27 and put together the NBA's second-longest winning streak. It ended 11 victories shy of the 1971-72 Lakers, who won 33 in a row.

David Stern, here's a suggestion for the $25,000 soon to flow your way from the bank account of Paul Pierce, the Boston Celtic accused by your league of making a "menacing gesture" -- interpretation: gang sign -- at an opponent in a recent playoff game. Take that cash and earmark it for the L.A. park Pierce has helped rescue from gangs. Or for the construction of a Boys and Girls Club in Inglewood that he's helping build.

LAKERS (57-25, 12-3 in playoffs) vs. CELTICS (66-16, 12-8 in playoffs) Season series: Celtics, 2-0 Buzz: You wanted them, you got them. The Dream Matchup became a reality Friday when the Celtics won in Detroit to take the Eastern Conference finals, 4-2, sending them into an NBA Finals rematch with the Lakers, 21 years later. Happily for the Lakers, this is not the Celtics team that soundly beat them twice this season.

Twenty-one years later, they meet again. The Boston Celtics nodded in destiny's direction a day after the Lakers did, bringing together two of the most relevant sports franchises for the NBA Finals. It will be intriguing, laden with superstars and heavy with symbolism matched only by an expected meteoric rise in TV ratings. Somewhere, David Stern is smiling, along with Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Bill Russell, James Worthy and Kevin McHale.

The titles were easier to win than the rings. Frank Ramsey was a Hall of Fame forward on the Boston Celtics in the 1950s and '60s, an era when Bill Russell ruled in the paint and the Celtics won 11 NBA titles in 13 years. Ramsey played on seven Celtics title teams -- he got only one championship ring. "There wasn't enough money to buy them," he said. For most of this period, the Celtics gave out rings only to players winning their first championship.

The tradition has been well-documented, from Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain to Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, but who's going to guard whom in the latest version of Lakers vs. Celtics? The teams start the NBA Finals on Thursday, but there was still a bit of uncertainty, perhaps even coyness, on the Lakers' behalf as far as matchups. Derek Fisher will guard second-year point guard Rajon Rondo and Kobe Bryant will start out on Ray Allen, but the frontcourt is somewhat unsettled.

With the start of the NBA Finals approaching, the chance to rub elbows with history isn't being lost among the Boston Celtics. "Two nights ago, before I went to sleep, it crept into my mind a little bit and I started thinking about the atmosphere, about what exactly this whole thing meant and I couldn't sleep," Ray Allen said. "If you think about it too much, then you're going to just sit up and think about it and your thoughts are going to take over your body."

One team put the hammer down, the other almost got nailed. While the Lakers were ripping through Denver in four games, Utah in six and San Antonio in five, Boston needed seven games to beat lowly Atlanta, another seven to slip past one-dimensional Cleveland and six to oust Detroit. Somehow, the Celtics' regular-season dominance (66-16) hasn't translated to postseason prowess (12-8), but here they are in the NBA Finals, ready or not.

Matchup decisions made by coaches in the NBA Finals have a long history of determining the league championship. In 1975, Washington's K.C. Jones made the wrong move when he assigned Mike Riordan to defend Golden State's Rick Barry, who averaged 40.8 points a game and was named Finals MVP after leading the Warriors to a 4-0 sweep.

A few weeks ago, you'll remember, Phil Jackson was asked if he knew what to expect on a nightly basis from Vladimir Radmanovic. "Absolutely not," he said. Laugh. Pause. Sigh. Here we are in the NBA Finals, and Absolutely Not is guarding Absolutely Money. Absolutely Not will have to defend the Boston Celtics' most explosive scorer and relentless attacker. Absolutely Not must stop a guy who scored 41 points in a Game 7 against the Cleveland Cavaliers. Vladimir Radmanovic must defend Paul Pierce.