NBA Christmas Day: Lakers-Celtics Players of the Past Reflect on Race to 18 Titles

As he prepares to analyze the latest game in the Los Angeles Lakers and the Boston Celtics rivalry, former Lakers forward Mychal Thompson often receives many reminders that the tension continues to linger nearly four decades later.

Whenever Thompson arrives in Boston for a Lakers’ road game as the team’s longtime radio analyst, Celtics fans greet him with boos as if he were playing in the 1987 NBA Finals again. Then, in an interaction that Thompson described as “pure hell,” a certain former Celtics player typically approaches Thompson on press row to remind him of the stakes.

“Cedric Maxwell searches us out and starts harassing us about who is going to get to 18 titles first,” Thompson told The Messenger. “We have a good time going back and forth on who is going to get there first.”

The Lakers will host the Celtics at Crypto.com Arena on Monday as part of the NBA’s five-game Christmas Day slate (5 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN), marking the first time since 2008 that the league’s most accomplished franchises square off on the holiday. It seems inevitable that Thompson will share more barbs with Maxwell, the Celtics’ radio analyst, about which team will set the NBA record for most league championships. The Celtics currently hold a 39% chance of making the Finals and a 24.8% of winning, per The Messenger’s NBA Forecast, while the Lakers have a 7.3% and 3.2% chance, respectively. 

During their recent exchanges, Maxwell bragged about Celtics stars Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown leading the Celtics to the 2022 NBA Finals. The team fell to the Golden State Warriors in six games. Thompson, in turn, boasted that the Lakers have “the greatest player in the world” (LeBron James) and “the deepest team in basketball.” These Christmas Day exchanges could preview more heated dialogue in June.

“It’s a preview of the NBA Finals!” Thompson said of the Lakers-Celtics game on Christmas Day. “If everybody is healthy, I see the Lakers coming out of the West and I see Boston as one of the threats to come out of the East.”

Maxwell has also talked trash to former Lakers forwards James Worthy and Michael Cooper in recent years. Though they have had cordial conversations on both of their podcasts, Cooper and Maxwell have still thrown digs at each other about the Lakers-Celtics rivalry. Worthy has also traded insults with Maxwell on the air as a Spectrum SportsNet analyst.

As he walked down an arena hallway before a recent Lakers game, Worthy said he remains at peace with the Lakers’ title fortunes “as long as [Maxwell] doesn’t get it before I do.” Unlike when he played the Celtics three times in the NBA Finals (1984, ‘85, ‘87), however, Worthy stressed he hasn’t become consumed by which team wins the NBA championship arms race.

“I just hope we get 18; that’s the way I look at it,” Worthy said. “I don’t think about that. It’s a waste of my time.”

It initially seemed inconceivable that the Lakers could even eclipse the Celtics for most NBA titles. The late Boston center Bill Russell won seven of his 11 NBA championships at the Lakers’ expense (1959; ‘62-63; ‘65-66; ‘68-69). Magic Johnson and Larry Bird then revitalized the rivalry in the ‘80s that began with Boston’s continued superiority (1984) followed by the Lakers finally ending their drought (1985).

The late Lakers owner Jerry Buss then said on the CBS telecast, “This has removed the most odious sentence from the English language. It can never be said again that the Lakers have never beaten the Celtics.” At that point, however, former Lakers forward Jamaal Wilkes hardly fathomed the Lakers could eventually eclipse Boston for most NBA titles.

“My job as a player was just to do the best I could to try to help the team win championships,” Wilkes told The Messenger. “I didn’t really focus on the disparity or anything like that. I didn’t have sleepless nights over it.”

Two years after ending that drought, the Lakers beat Boston in the 1987 NBA Finals, which  Thompson called “the best team in history” because of Johnson’s playmaking, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s skyhook and the roster’s defensive depth. 

After, former Lakers coach Pat Riley famously predicted a repeat during the team’s championship parade. The Lakers would defend their NBA title in 1988 against the Detroit Pistons. Did the Lakers also have clairvoyance then about their chances to beat the Celtics eventually for most NBA titles?

“I always thought we would because of the consistency and ownership of the Lakers through the Buss family and the foundation that Dr. Buss set down for Jeanie and the rest of his kids to follow,” Thompson said. “They had the right formula with learning from Dr. Buss on how to build a championship team. That’s been proven right.”

Nonetheless, both the Lakers and Celtics put that championship arms race on hold after experiencing turbulence: Johnson’s HIV announcement in 1991, injuries and age breaking up the Celtics’ championship core. Six years after the Lakers’ Finals three-peat with Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant (2000-02), the Celtics-Lakers rivalry picked up with the two teams splitting the difference in 2008 (Boston) and in 2010 (Lakers). 

The Celtics soon broke up their core, which eventually paved the way to land Brown (2016) and Tatum (2017) in the NBA Draft. The Lakers still committed to Bryant while he nursed injuries during his final three NBA seasons (2014-15) while collecting draft picks that were eventually used to partly clear cap space for the James acquisition in the 2018 offseason. After acquiring Anthony Davis the following summer, the Lakers finally tied the Celtics for most NBA titles by winning the 2020 NBA Finals. 

“People want to say that doesn’t really count. But they won it under the same conditions and rules that everyone else played in,” Wilkes said. “That’s all they could do. They can’t change the situation. They can’t make COVID-19 disappear. I think they deserve credit for that 2020 championship.”

The Celtics have appeared in one NBA Finals (2022) and five Eastern Conference Finals with their star backcourt (2017-18, ‘20, ‘23). Amid injuries and uneven rosters around James and Davis, the Lakers appeared in the Western Conference Finals last season with a more balanced roster.

That backdrop sets up a potential NBA Finals collision course between the two rivals. Should that happen, Maxwell and Thompson will surely argue on press row about the outcome. Thompson already predicted the Lakers will beat the Celtics in a seven-game Finals series, which will prompt him to celebrate at Maxwell’s expense.

“I’ll just walk around with a big 18 medallion around my chest,” Thompson said, laughing. “I’ll hold it over his head when he’s not looking, and then take a picture. Then, I’ll put it all over social media.”

Mark Medina is an NBA contributor to The Messenger. Follow him on X, Instagram, Facebook and Threads.