Hooping it old school


Yet another piece of confirmation that I'm getting old.

An e-mail arrives in my inbox inviting me to attend my 20-year high school reunion in August.

High school wasn't a hellish experience for me by any means, but there are some aspects of 1984-88 that are best left in the time capsule.

Haircuts, for one thing. Those floppy, blond-dyed monstrosities that seemingly every wannabe surfer dude in Central Florida rocked despite the fact that no self-respecting Flock of Seagulls roadie would have kept such a do after its 1984 expiration date.

Ex-girlfriends, for another. That's all that should really be said on the subject.

In the end, curiosity will get the better of me and I'll go. I'll reconnect with friends I lost touch with since heading off to college. My wife will get to hear stories about me. Some of them might even be flattering.

I'm sure some of my friends and I will laugh about what we looked like in our yearbook photos. We'll assuredly laugh at the late-30-something paunch and male pattern baldness that defines so many of us now.

Since I happen to be a sports writer, they're likely to ask me about what I do and which athletes I've met. Eventually, we'll have to talk about the NBA Finals, about the Celtics and Lakers, about which team emerged from this nostalgia-coated seven-game series because those two teams fueled many a lunch room discussion back in the day.

This particular NBA championship series offers a trip in the Way Back Machine even if Kevin Garnett and Kobe Bryant have replaced Larry Bird and Magic Johnson as the headliners. It's enough to make your inner teen-ager escape to pump some Public Enemy or Beastie Boys on the boom box.

Twenty years ago, it was impossible to conceive of any other teams playing for the league title. Michael Jordan was on the scene, of course, but he had yet to transform the Chicago Bulls into a dynasty.

No matter where you grew up, no matter where you went to school, there were two kinds of sports people. You were a Celtics person or a Lakers person. You couldn't be both.

Truth be told, I was a Celtics person. I appreciated the Lakers -- the way Magic could see the court and squeeze bounce passes through the tightest openings -- but I related to the Celtics more. Even though I experienced some success as an athlete, I was gravity-bound and height-deprived. I couldn't run the floor like Magic, couldn't tower over everyone like Kareem. I also couldn't clear a Visa card with my vertical leap, which made me see players like Bird, Dennis Johnson, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale as not being so different from the rest of us stiffs (even though they were).

The Boston Celtics of today are far different than those of my youth, but I'm still a Celtics guy.

I'll pull for KG and Ray Allen, but I'll hold out hope that this series produces excellence and imagery that will be remembered 20 years from now.

Think of some of the classic outcomes and quirkiness that this series will try to live up to:

* 1984, Game 4: Celtics 129, Lakers 125

Mild-mannered Kevin McHale set the tone for the series by clotheslining Los Angeles ruffian Kurt Rambis on his way to an easy layup in the first half. The benches cleared and tempers flared. That swung the balance of the series and set the stage for ...

* Game 5: Celtics 121, Lakers 103

Bird blows up for 34 point, scorching the nets on a day when it was 97 degrees inside Boston Garden. That was a prelude to ...

* Game 7: Celtics 111, Lakers 102: Boston led by three points with a minute to play, but Dennis Johnson and Cedric ''Cornbread'' Maxwell saved the day with a pair of defensive takeaways. Boston beat L.A. in a Game 7, winner-take-all situation for the fourth time.

* 1985, Game 1: Celtics 148, Lakers 114

Journeyman Scott Wedman went off, going 11-for-11 from the field, and was never really heard from again.

* 1985, Game 4: Celtics 107, Lakers 105

Down 2-1 in the series, Boston gets bailed out by a sequence in which Bird passed out of a double team, finding Johnson for a game-winning 15-footer with two seconds left. But, ultimately, the Celtics' recovery went for naught because ...

* Game 6: Lakers 111, Celtics 100

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar became the oldest NBA Finals MVP at age 38 (which gives hope to all of us on the cusp of a 20-year reunion) after schooling Parish for 29 points, including 18 in the second half to clinch the series for L.A.

* 1987, Game 4: Lakers 107, Celtics 106

Bird drops in a 3-pointer for a 106-104 Boston lead with 12 seconds to go. Abdul-Jabbar cuts it to one with a free throw. McHale loses the ball moments later (with the help of a Mychal Thompson shove), then Magic breaks Boston's heart with a baby skyhook over McHale and Parish.

The Lakers clinched the series two games later, bringing an end to a remarkable period in NBA history in which the league became defined by East vs. West, by Bird vs. Magic, by Boston against L.A.

Twenty years later, we can still work up a good argument about which team and which superstars were better.

One thing we can agree on is that the sneakers Bird and Magic inspired were as awful as the haircuts we sported 20 years ago.

Black or purple and gold Converses.

No thanks.

Some elements of the past are best left buried.