Bob Ryan talks about Bill Simmons, 60s Lakers vs. Celtics

[Roy Hobbs]

This one's for you, nick.

Beware of False Prophets.

Beware of clever people who know what they know, but don't know what they don't know, which is far more important.

There is a younger writer of great renown who loves the Boston Celtics, which is fine. He commands an enormous national audience, who have come to regard him as The Authority on all things Celtic. And he has an exhaustive knowledge of the current team. No problem there.

But he has over-stepped his bounds. He is trying to sum up the whole Celtics-Lakers thing in his dot.com forum, and he starts off by saying that it wasn't really a rivalry because the Celtics won the first eight times the two played in the Finals. He completely dismissed the six series of the 60s because the Celtics won all six, as if this somehow means by definition the two teams did not have a viable rivalry.

Link.

[BudweiserCeltic]

This is a response for this statement by BS:

Myth: It's the NBA's best and longest rivalry.
Truth: Boston beat L.A. for the title eight straight times before falling in 1985. If that's a long-standing rivalry, so is Tom vs. Jerry, Andy vs. The Sistas and hammer vs. nail. Isn't it more of a "recent rivalry that was once a relentless butt-whupping"?

And here's BS's response:

20. "The subject changed to one that could not be avoided, Kobe Bryant. 'You gave the kid a lot of room the last couple of years,' [Shaq] said. 'You stayed off his back and let him try to work things out for himself. I just don't understand why he didn't recognize that. I don't understand why he was unhappy.'"

To something I didn't understand this week: the great Bob Ryan taking exception to my tongue-in-cheek paragraph in this week's "13 Myths" column about the Lakers-Celtics rivalry being a relentless butt-whupping (and not a rivalry) until after the 1985 Finals, leading to history being made: That's right, someone writing a serious rebuttal to an intentionally ridiculous column. I never thought it could happen, but if it DID ever happen, I knew it was going to be a Boston College grad who did it.

(By the way, I disagreed with Bob's serious rebuttal to my intentionally ridiculous column. Both sides need to win for them to have a rivalry; if only one side is winning, then it's a feud and that's all. I covered this in pages 183-186 of my book in the chapter about the Yankees-Red Sox feud -- complete with analysis of Webster's official definition of the word "rivalry" -- a feud that never achieved "rivalry" status until Oct. 21, 2004. From 1959 through 1984, the Celtics and Lakers were feuding and that's it. And if you disagree with that, take it up with Webster.)

I'm sorry to say, but I have to side with BS on this one.  Didn't Bob Ryan also marginalized some of the Celtics' fans early in the season, or in recent years? It's funny how these are the two going at it.