(Continued from Part I)
This series meant a lot to me for many reasons, but two in particular stood out above the rest: my love for Rasheed Wallace and my hatred towards Kobe Bryant. Everything about Kobe screamed insincerity, from his blatant co-opting of Michael Jordan’s moves and body language to the phony “street” cadence he inflected in his speech. “Sheed”, on the other hand, was never afraid to be himself and always spoke without a filter. Even if his attitude occasionally hurt him and his teams, I admired his authenticity. The fact that three of my five favorite players since I started following the NBA closely in 1999 were Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce, and Ray Allen (Allen Iverson was second only to Rasheed) only added fuel to the fire. I needed to see them beat Kobe again and shatter his dream of winning back-to-back titles as the leader of his team.
After five games, the C’s looked good with a 3-2 lead in a highly competitive series, but everything came crashing down (no pun intended) when Kendrick Perkins suffered a knee injury in the early moments of game six. Clearly distraught by this unfortunate turn of events, his teammates were unable to focus on the task at hand and the Lakers comfortably tied the series. Boston still had one more chance to beat L.A., but it would be considerably more difficult to contain seven-footers Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum without one of their best rebounders and interior defenders.
Kevin Garnett (5) goes up for a jump shot against Pau Gasol, while Kobe Bryant (24) looks on. Photo (cc) by Eric Kilby and published under a Creative Commons license. Some rights reserved.
Driven by pride and a sense of urgency, the Celtics came out swinging. The sheer bliss I felt during the first three quarters of this game was similar to the one that every Puerto Rican shared on August 15, 2004. The Celtics were sharing the ball and working hard defensively while Kobe was forcing the issue and missing almost every shot he took. Lakers fans were not only watching their team lose, but their hero was tarnishing his legacy, perhaps irreversibly. There was a palpable silence in the Staples Center, but in San Juan, I was screaming my lungs out.
All of a sudden, everything began to fall apart. We started missing shots. Kobe and Gasol attacked the boards relentlessly. The C’s seemed to run out of gas right as the Lakers got their second wind, and the crowd went wild. How were we going to get out of this and regain control of the game?
To be continued…
A Journalist Who Bleeds Green 
