Celtics ready to party like it's 1987

You know that the Boston Celtics are back in the big picture when the Red Sox are changing game times to avoid a conflict with Causeway Street.
The first pitch at Fenway Park will be at 6:05 Thursday night, one hour before the usual start thanks to what the Celtics did in Detroit on Friday night. Boston closed out the Eastern Conference finals with an 89-81 win over the Pistons to put The Hub in a time machine and bring it back to better days -- the 1980s to be exact, when the Celtics' dynasty ruled the NBA.
It's been 21 years since Boston has played in The Finals, and in all that time the Celtics' league-record 16 titles still stands tall as the target for every other franchise. Boston's quest for Banner 17 starts Thursday at 8:30 and the opening tap can't get here soon enough.
Hard to believe that this scenario could get any better, but the Los Angeles Lakers would be the victims if Boston is able to finish this thing. NBA executives must be licking their chops right now at what they project the ratings for this series to be. These are the league's two marquee franchises, and they haven't met for the title since 1987. That year marked the 10th time the two teams faced off in the league's 41-year history, the final spark in an East-West feud that featured two contrasting styles of play. The Celtics were blue-collar guys playing in front of a blue-collar crowd, the flashy Lakers performing their Showtime artistry with celebrities like Jack Nicholson sitting courtside. It was the perfect match-up -- and then it was over in a flash, buried with the memory of Len Bias.
Basketball in Boston has never been the same since. Yes, the Celtics made a run to the Eastern Conference finals in 2002, but the west was so dominant that it didn't matter who was going to win the east. Boston didn't have the depth to beat New Jersey and would have had no chance against the Lakers, San Antonio Spurs or anybody else who survived a conference in which eight teams were winning 50 games per season. All of that changed this year when Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett came to town, joining Paul Pierce in a new version of the Big Three that has Boston buzzing again. The old echoes of titles gone by, the ghosts of Red Auerbach and Johnny Most and the legends like Bill Russell and John Havlicek are on the tips of tongues against as though they never left.
And we appreciate it more this time -- at least I do -- because it's been gone for so long. Growing up watching those glory days in the Boston Garden, the standard crowd of 14,890 packing the little sweatbox and filling it with roars that could never be silenced, seemed like they would never end. They did when Larry Bird's back gave out, when Kevin McHale's quick feet became too battered and broken to stand and when Reggie Lewis collapsed in a Northeastern gym. They went away when Robert Parish left town and Bill Walton went to an announcer's booth, when Danny Ainge went white-collar and Dennis Johnson faded from the playoff limelight back into the shadows where he normally worked his magic. That excitement hasn't been back since, but it'll be here Thursday night in a new building that's about to find a soul, in front of a new generation of fans who desperately want to have something in common with the one that came before.