OPINION

By Michael Wilbon

Columnist

updated 2:14 a.m. ET June 18, 2008

Michael Wilbon Columnist

BOSTON - After 22 years of gentle sleep, the Boston Celtics became giants again here Tuesday night. They did the single thing the Celtics have done better than any basketball team in the history of the sport: win another championship. And they got this one by doing what they love to do more than anything else: beating the stuffing out of their blood rival, the Los Angeles Lakers, to win their 17th NBA championship.

It had been 22 years worth of losing and tragedy, of lottery appearances and very long faces, of rebuilding plans, of coaches coming and going. Once upon a time the Celtics were the most important basketball franchise in the world, basketball's equivalent of the New York Yankees. But over the last 22 seasons, unable to raise a championship banner, the Celtics had become something of a museum exhibit, some relic from an earlier civilization. They were reduced to black-and-white clips and strains of broadcaster Johnny Most's voice on replays for a generation of fans and players. It was all too old school to be relevant. People under 40 were more likely to think of Boston as a doormat than a dynasty.

But a former Celtic, Danny Ainge, led them back to relevancy with those two appropriately celebrated summertime acquisitions, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. And they, along with Paul Pierce, Coach Doc Rivers and role players who understand their station in life, led the Celtics back to greatness. It became official Tuesday night, here at the new Garden, when the Celtics knocked the Lakers around as if they were a bunch of ragamuffins. No double-digit comeback was needed, there was no explosion from Kobe Bryant, and there was nothing puppet master Phil Jackson could do as the Celtics came close to reaching basketball nirvana during the first half. They took a 23-point halftime lead and coasted to championship ecstasy, 131-92. Red Auerbach might have been looking down on all he created, while lighting his victory cigar.

Midway through the third quarter the Boston lead had reached 31 points and hardly anybody in the building sat, as the Celtics worked on the finishing touches and joined the Red Sox and Patriots in a very proud winners' circle.

Kendrick Perkins, the Celtics' starting center, was back in the lineup despite an injured shoulder. Allen left a sick son at home in California to take his customary position of shooting guard, then once the game began had to fight through a smashed nose and blurry vision. The Celtics had all hands on deck in the push to close down the series in six and avoid having to play a Game 7 against Kobe and the Lakers here Thursday night.

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The role players, each of whom seems to identify with a specific task, helped push the lead from three points to 14, at 43-29, with five minutes left in the second quarter. Eddie House, the shooter, came off the bench to hit a couple of jumpers, as did James Posey. Perkins and Leon Powe provided the muscle, as did Glen "Big Baby" Davis, who brought his 300-plus pounds off the pine to wreak havoc. The result at the end of the first half was a 58-35 Boston lead, during which time the Lakers' front-court stars, Pau Gasol and Lamar Odom, did next to nothing. They backed down as if they were physically afraid of Boston's big men.

The Celtics have always enjoyed a bloody and fierce battle, as if the traits are in their DNA. And Ainge, in putting together this team, was smart to locate players such as Posey, who helped the Heat win a title in Miami, and Tony Allen, who has been injured through parts of this postseason but loves a scrap.

The Lakers' biggest problem is that they, like the Hawks and Cavaliers and Pistons before them, had no solution for Pierce, who by leading this particular franchise to a championship in such a decisive way took a spot alongside Larry Bird, John Havlicek, Dave Cowens, Bill Russell and Bob Cousy as leaders of basketball's royal franchise. Pierce didn't have a prolific Game 6, and he might not be as revered as his predecessors, not yet anyway. But he nevertheless belongs in the franchise's championship team picture because of his poise under pressure throughout the playoffs.

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