Watching Game 1 of the Lakers-Celtics NBA Finals the other night, the historical perspective placed on the game forced me to think back to another Game 1, 20 years prior. That game had a lot of Lakers-Celtics flair to it, as well, although it was the Pistons this time taking on the purple-and-gold on the familiar Forum floor, having recently vanquished the leprechauns from Boston in a series that sapped all of the energy this then-9-year-old had.
Can sports ever loom as large as they did when we were kids? The hype behind this 2008 Finals demonstrates that perhaps the greatest feature of professional sports is its longevity and continuity - we care today in large part because of how much we cared yesterday, and how much our parents and grandparents before us had invested in these same franchises and games. For me, sports was the window through which I was exposed to the larger world - though I had never been to Boston or Los Angeles, I knew them by the faces of their teams and fans. And as I readied myself for Game 1 of the 1988 NBA Finals, I was unnerved by this first ever foray in to the Wild Wild West for me.
As I've written before, the 1980s NBA was, in itself, a journey - to become champion, it seemed, you must first ascend step-by-step through the playoff rounds through past champions, proving yourself worthy of, well, facing Worthy and his Lakers. The 1988 Finals felt like graduation from the confines of the East for me and my beloved Detroit Pistons, having the previous year passed the second round only to fall to Boston in a grueling, seven-game Eastern Conference Finals. It only seemed logical that, this year, we would take that next step to the Finals, but upon getting there it just felt like unchartered territory. The Boston Garden parquet, still intimidating, felt more comfortable now, having watched my team play there so often in the previous two years. The Forum, with its darkened floor, star-studded crowd, and the famous yellow jerseys? This was like leaving the friendly confines of Kansas for the magical-yet-foreign world of Oz.
Can we ever replicate the types 0f world-broadening experiences we lived through at that age? Like hopping rock-to-rock across a brook, this nine-year-old and his young team steadied themselves play-by-play, beginning unsure and off-balance and growing to feel stable and confident. Few times in my life have I been as nervous as I was that night, entering the unknown, knowing that it was what I had dreamed of but fearing that it might be over my head. Like so many things in those years - riding a bicycle, learning multiplication, jumping off the diving board - the insurmountable and frightening quickly became triumphant, then comfortable. When Isiah Thomas buried a three, stole the inbounds pass, and hit another to turn a one-point lead to a seven-point gap just before halftime, I felt the exact same way that I had when my father's hand left my bike seat on my first ride without training wheels - free, exuberant, grown-up.
We won that game, and I rested comfortably and happily that night, having vicariously increased my sense of belonging in the world through those upstart young Pistons. The series took a number of twists and turns en route to a devastating seven-game finish (although I still believe that the no-call on the last play of Game 7 was a travesty, and that if Isiah doesn't turn his ankle we win that championship and the next two), but by then I was mature enough to enjoy the series, rather than fear it. Over the course of that series, I finished fourth grade, passed my fractions and long-division tests, ran well in the Father's Day mile run downtown, won some Field Day ribbons, and grew in to a stronger, more confident boy. By the next summer and the 1989 Finals, I was an old pro, (more) calmly taking the games in stride, enjoying the drama of sports, and anxiously awaiting my opportunity to take down the bully that had beaten us in seven games the previous year.
When I reflect on the NBA Playoffs past, I see a microcosm of growing up, and appreciate the role that sports played in my maturation as a human being. We should all be so lucky to fondly remember the lessons that our favorite teams and players taught us growing up, and I think that so much of sports is made meaningful by that continuity that it adds to our lives year-by-year. The NBA Finals have a special place in my heart, as they represented spring, the conquest of new challenges, and the expanding of my world each year. That Game 1 in 1988, though it took place 2,000 miles away and was contested by complete strangers, was one of the more important events in my young life at the time, if only for what it represented. That's the power of sports, and the reason that I hope young people are enjoying the history that flanks this year's NBA Finals.
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