jmccollum@latour.DEC (10/16/85)
I've been reading with great interest the comments about the Celtics team for this coming year. It seems 90% of all contributors to net.sport.hoops are Cetlics fans, which is no real suprise conserding their dominence in the past, so I take everything with a grain of salt. I'm a Lakers fans living in the Boston area and I have some obsersavtions to make. There's no question the Celts have improved themselves this year. The addition of Walton is just what the doctor ordered. The Celtics loss in last year's playoffs was due to two factors; no backup to spell Parish and no forwards off the bench to counteract the abudance of forwards to Lakers literally threw at them. But Walton can't fill both rolls at the same time and they could still use help at forward. The Lakers, meanwhile, have made improvements beyond what the Celtics have done. A.C. Green may turn out to be the steal of the draft, most likely more so than Sam Vincent. The addition of Lucas gives them a impressive list of forwards where they still have an advantage (in terms of sheer numbers) over the Celtics. Mitch Kupchak continues to improve after his crushing injury and provides them with an excellent backup to Jabbar, who has just signed a one-year extension to his $2 million per year contract (so this will NOT be his last year after all). Considering then the additions made to both teams and the fact that the Lakers won 4 of 6 in last years finals when the Celtics had home court advantage (where they lost 2 of 3), I look for the Lakers to repeat. But to do that they will have to show they are hungry enough for the back-to-back titles last won by the Celts. Bird and company showed that they were last year and the Lakers will have to suck it up and forget what happened last June. I don't see any reason that Boston shouldn't be able to take the east unless they encounter injury problems (i.e. Bird and Walton). Remember how quickly Sandy Koufax was out when he contracted arthritis in his left elbow :-). Jim DEC TOPS-20 Monitor Group decvax!decwrl!dec-rhea!dec-latour!jmccollum