Posted by Roland at June 7th, 2008

It was just 51 years ago that Red Auerbach opened the 1957 NBA Finals by punching St. Louis Hawks owner Ben Kerner in the mouth just before tip-off.

Auerbach, the late, great Celtics coach, once explained to me that he socked Kerner during a heated exchange over the height of the baskets in old Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis.

The ugly incident was quickly glossed over (fisticuffs were common in the old NBA), but the message has remained clear for decades. Challenge the Celtics in a championship setting, and you’re likely to get your clock cleaned.

The Los Angeles Lakers got a reminder of that in Game 1 of the 2008 NBA Finals in Boston Thursday with their loss.

I hate to say it, but you could see this coming. That’s why I wrote Tuesday of the pertinent 1980s saying of that noted egotist, Pat Riley: “No rebounds, no rings.”

“The Celtics know it,” Tex Winter said the day after Game 1. “They’re emphasizing it to their players. They tell them, ‘We gotta beat this team on the boards.’”

Why? Age-old logic. If the Lakers can protect the defensive glass, they can get the ball out for a fast break, thus controlling the game. If they can’t secure the defensive rebound, the Celtics get second chances and keep the tempo in their favor.

Rebounding, of course, is a function of size, strength, quickness and desire.

Let’s face it, if you’re Kevin Garnett and you’ve labored in the NBA for umpteen seasons with no real success, are you going to let Pau Gasol stand in your way now that you have a chance to win a title?

On the other hand, at 7-1, Gasol has plenty of size and quickness. “I told him he’s got to do a better job of screening off the boards,” said Winter, the longtime mentor to Lakers coach Phil Jackson, pointing out that Gasol had zero rebounds in the first half.

“He’s not very strong, and he tries to reach and gets knocked around,” Winter said of Gasol. “He tries to reach instead of using that quickness. He can jump and he has that tremendous reach. But he can’t reach for that rebound. He’s gotta go get ‘em.”

Winter addressed the issue with the Lakers center and got assurances that Gasol would correct the matter in Game 2 on Sunday.

Rebounding just happens to be the most basic, critical expression of championship desire, but there are more subtle factors as well.

Los Angeles had soared through the earlier rounds of the playoffs by moving guard Kobe Bryant to the wing and taking advantage of some of the sneakier elements of the Winter’s triangle offense. Bryant sliced and diced the San Antonio Spurs with relish in the conference championship series.

“The Celtics cut off a couple of our options that were really effective for us against San Antonio,” Winter observed. “They obviously did a good job of scouting. When they took away our options, we didn’t counter properly.”

Those options had produced high percentage shots for Bryant against San Antonio, but the Celtics were ready to stop that.

“Kobe didn’t react to the adjustment,” Winter said.

Things had gone well for Los Angeles in the first half, in part because Boston’s defense was overplaying. When opponents overplay, the Lakers go to their “automatics” and punish opponents with back cuts.

L.A. scored off several back cuts in the first half, and the Boston coaching staff promptly responded in the second half by having their guys pack it back in the lane. The overplaying disappeared, and so did the Lakers’ advantage.

With the defense packed in the lane and cutting Bryant off from drives or his h igh-percentage shots, he tried to do more on his own, which left Winter critical of his shot selection. The 86-year-old assistant addressed the issue with Bryant in the second half.

“I told him he had to have better shot selection and to move the ball,” Winter said. “He knew it.”

The Lakers have often profted by Byrant abandoing the triangle offense and going on his own. “If he’s hot and hitting shots, that can really work for us,” Winter said. “But sometimes his scoring just covers a multitude of our sins.”

With the Celtics determined to pack their defense in the lane, that means the Lakers are going to have to make jump shots. That means it’s more important than ever to use their offense, to move the ball and find good open shots.

Derek Fisher, Sasha Vujacic and L.A.’s other shooters will have to hit open shots, Winter said. He also noted that there are still plenty of elements the Lakers can dig out of their bag of triangle tricks, which has him optimistic for Game 2.

“We’ve got options,” he said. “We’re not panicking.”

In addition, Winter called for other elements:

* Better defense on Rajon Rondo to keep the Celtic point guard out of the lane where he creates for Boston’s shooters;

* More good effort on Garnett, who got off to a strong start but then “shot about 2 for 13 down the stretch.”

* More from forward Lamar Odom. “Odom, he can come and go,” Winter said. “He can disappear.”

The child of two fundamentalist preachers, Jackson isn’t what you’d call a religious person. Rather, he’s deeply spiritual. He’s studied all the world’s religions and has selected various elements for his personal beliefs.

However, Jackson’s team usually recites the Lord’s Prayer for Sunday games.

Beyond that, there’s always the karma Jackson tries to build with sage burnings, drum beatings and meditation.

The Lakers have done none of that in Boston, although noted sports psychologist George Mumford, who worked with Jackson’s Chicago and early Los Angeles teams, visited the team during practice Friday morning.

Mumford, who has worked with Boston College sports teams in recent years, is known for helping athletes to focus mentally.

The Lakers are surely going to need that if they’re going to turn this series around in Game 2.

Then again, the Celtics smacked them hard in Game 1. Maybe that in itself is enough to bring them back around to reality.

Roland Lazenby is the author of The Show, The Inside Story Of The Spectacular Los Angeles Lakers In the Words Of Those Who Lived It.