Michael Ventre

LOS ANGELES - Scripts get rewritten all the time in Hollywood. But this was like something from a pitch meeting in the Bizarro World.

Instead of making Pau Gasol the milquetoast, they made him the bully. Rather than portray the Lakers as the weaklings, they became the brutes. All that was missing was a wardrobe switch of uniforms with Boston in gold and L.A. in green.

With the Lakers’ 102-89 victory over the Celtics in Game 1 of the 2010 NBA finals on Thursday night at Staples Center, the whole narrative to this sequel of a hit from two years ago — which was itself a revival of a dusty old series — was turned upside down. The Lakers, who were pushed around in 2008, did the pushing this time.

The Lakers outrebounded the visitors, 42-31. They had a shocking 16-0 advantage in second-chance points. They fortified the middle so that Rajon Rondo couldn’t do that thing he does where he destroys everybody. They took the random bump from Kevin Garnett or the sundry shove from Rasheed Wallace and gave it right back to the Celtics.

“I thought they were by far the more physical team,” Boston coach Doc Rivers said.

That’s a dynamic new twist on a familiar story. These teams have been jousting in championship series on and off since 1959, when the Lakers were still in Minneapolis. In all that time, through the ’60s with Bill Russell, through the ’80s with Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish, even in ’08 with Garnett and Kendrick Perkins, the Celtics have always been the team that, when push came to shove, they excelled at both.

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On top of all that, Gasol had become the poster boy for dainty basketball. To hear critics tell it, the Spaniard was like a nervous bullfighter who kept getting gored. He came to the Lakers in a trade from the Memphis Grizzlies in February ’08, and played in the finals that spring. The thumping that the Celtics administered to the Lakers seemed to fester nastily on the ego of Gasol.

But on Thursday night, he set the tone for a new day, outplaying the Celtics’ big men and leading an overall aggressive effort by his team. Gasol finished with 23 points while leading both teams in rebounds (14) and blocked shots (3).

“Well, what I see from him is just the little actions that represent not backing down type of things,” noted Lakers coach Phil Jackson. “Getting hit, taking the blow, absorbing it, not reacting to it one way or the other with the mentality to look at the referee or wonder about the blow and the legitimacy of it. Those are the things he’s learned in the last year and a half or two.”

At the start of Game 1, Gasol sported that uncertain expression again, the one fans remember from ’08. It looked a little like when a kid starts at a new school and he doesn’t know anybody and then he gets trampled when the lunch bell rings. He committed two turnovers within the first five and a half minutes.

Fortunately for the Lakers, Gasol snapped out of it, adjusted to the setting, and played an overall outstanding game.

“At first I was feeling a little bit more of the tension of the game and I wasn’t being aggressive or certain with my moves,” he said. “But I hit my first three shots and that was positive.”

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Meanwhile, the meanies from Boston were flat. They weren’t docile or disinterested, but they didn’t have their usual spark. “The thing is, you can’t ease into the game, especially in the finals,” Celtics forward Paul Pierce said. “I felt like all night we pretty much let them run what they wanted to run. There was no resistance.”

Pierce himself faced plenty of resistance from Ron Artest, who was acquired in the offseason as a defensive upgrade from Trevor Ariza for just such an occasion as this. Pierce still had 24 points and nine rebounds to lead his team in both categories, but he had to work extra hard for it all against the unyielding Artest, and he was 0-for-4 from 3-point territory.

Pierce was subdued afterward, and gave the Lakers their due, but seemed annoyed when asked about Artest’s work, offering at one point, “I don’t know what you want me to say.”

That was a skin moment, as in the Lakers being under his, and that of his teammates.

There were some of those during the postgame news conference, but many more during the actual contest. If Derek Fisher wasn’t throwing his body around at Rondo and other Celtics, it was Kobe Bryant or Lamar Odom or Shannon Brown or Jordan Farmar doing something to contribute.