In the last 30 years or so, the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics have won 12 NBA world championships between them. Los Angeles has nine, Boston three. Over this same period of time, they’ve met each other three times in the NBA Finals, with the Lakers winning two of those epic encounters. The Lakers are the reigning and defending NBA champions. The Celtics are gunning for their second NBA title in three years, and they could just as easily have been gunning for a 3-Peat now had it not been for the misfortune of an injury to superstar Kevin Garnett last season.

There is no denying that this is arguably the most legendary of sports rivalries. It has spanned generations not just of sports fans, but of the athletes, coaches and franchise personalities themselves, the great men who made up these organizations. Ever since the Celtics beat the Minneapolis Lakers for the first of what would be a record eight straight NBA championships, the blood feud has not let up, even when the Lakers relocated from the grim north of Minnesota to the golden sunshine of California.

They’ve had so many superstars between them they could probably make up two whole All-Time All Star rosters. Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, John Havlicek, Earvin “Magic” Johnson, Bob Cousy, Jerry West, Larry Bird, Elgin Baylor, Kevin McHale, James Worthy, Tommy Heinsohn, Jamal Wilkes, Robert Parish, Shaquille O-Neal – bums no one ever heard of, all of them at one time or another have worn either the Purple and Gold or the Green and White. In the modern NBA we have Garnett, Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Rasheed Wallace and Rajon Rondo, going up against Kobe Bryant, Pau Gasol, Lamar Odom, Andrew Bynum, Derek Fisher and Ron Artest.

Two years ago it looked like the NBA had finally come full circle when the Lakers and the Celtics met in the Finals. Both franchises took turns for the worse and were in the doldrums practically throughout the 1990’s. Sure, they had a few name players like Nick Van Exel, Vlade Divac, and Antoine Walker, but they certainly were no longer the elite championship-hauling franchises just the decade previous. Boston was in the worse shape, going through more seasons of under .500 ball. LA was just barely sneaking into the playoffs.

Bad luck visited both of the franchises. Boston lost two key young players who could have ensured longer-term stability when the original Big 3 of Bird-McHale-Parish began to age. Len Bias and Reggie Lewis both died suddenly supposedly of heart-related diseases. Magic Johnson, fresh off a stint in the NBA Finals against Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, announced in the early 1990’s that he had contracted HIV and would quit basketball. He made a short and ill-advised attempt at a comeback in the latter part of that decade.

Los Angeles made its resurrection earlier than Boston, when they brought in Phil Jackson to handle a team led by O-Neal and Bryant. Jackson, who helped Jordan win six NBA titles with Chicago, turned the trick for the Lakers. He used the same formula he had in Chicago: take two superstars and surround them with veteran role players hungry for a championship. This included a couple of former championship-era Bulls, Horace Grant and Ron Harper, and a man who already won previous championships with the Lakers, AC Green. This triumvirate would bring in three straight championships from 2000 – 2002. They would even make one last trip to the NBA Finals as a trio in 2004 but would yield to the Detroit Pistons of Chauncey Billups, Richard Hamilton and Ben Wallace.

In the summer of 2007, Boston GM Danny Ainge, himself a former Celtic great, would bring in Garnett and Allen to join Pierce. He was much-maligned for previous management decisions, and was reportedly at the point of organizational ultimatum. He would also assemble a solid support crew to surround his new superstars. With this new Big 3, the Celtics returned to greatness as well, downing Bryant and the Lakers in six hard-fought games, denying Bryant what should have been his first post-O’Neal NBA title.

Bryant and the Lakers are bringing in expectations of payback to these Finals. Their Game 6 humiliation in 2008 ensures this will be anything but history repeating itself – the Celtics walloped them by 39. Bryant will not allow it, especially since he is the one defending the title this time. He averaged 34 points per game in the West Finals to dismiss the upstart Phoenix Suns, and hit all of the important shots that returned LA to the Finals. “We don’t think about it,” was all he had to say when queried repeatedly about the payback angle as early as Round1 of these playoffs, and everybody and his brother knew he was being facetious. Of course he was thinking about it, more so than anybody else on that Los Angeles roster. Bryant is singular in his killer instinct and overwhelming will to win at all cost, and he needs to beat the Celtics to cement his personal legacy not just as a great player, but as a true Lakers great. Wilt, Kareem and Magic did it; he needs to do it too.

For the Celtics, there is also a lot of urgency. The core of these Celtics might be playing 21st century basketball, but they are also pushing into that dangerous age of the mid-30’s where the body is becoming less and less willing even as the mind continues to force the issue. This, realistically, could be the last time they could win it all as a team. Head coach Doc Rivers himself had to force his three superstars to accept lessened minutes and try to cruise as much as possible in the regular season to preserve them for the playoffs and finals. “It was a hard sell, but now everybody sees we really had to do it,” explained Rivers. “We know we haven’t got too many chances left, and this could be the last one.”

These Finals promise to be the same slam-bang event it has always been: plenty of tradition, plenty of history, plenty of bad blood, plenty of pride, colliding in the world’s most important basketball finale.

Celtics in five; Lakers in six or seven.