Being a sports fan is painful. We all know this to be true, yet we keep coming back year after year, season after season, ready to be hurt again. For the lucky fans, their team can occasionally win a title. For the really lucky ones, their team wins a bunch. Even then, every team falls short in the end more often than they pop champagne under confetti rain. It’s the nature of the beast.
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Every sports fan can tell you the championships their team’s won and the ones they just missed out on. I’m a fan of the New York Mets and the Chicago Bears, both of whom won their last championship in 1986. I was born in 1983, so I’ve never gotten to experience one. Who knows if I ever will, but it’s the hope that this year will be different that keeps me coming back.
I was born in New York, while Ice Cube was born in Los Angeles. He’s a successful rapper and actor, and I’m not. Truth be told, we don’t have a whole lot in common, but there is one thing. Ice Cube has experienced the same kind of sports heartbreak that I have, and like me, he’s had to watch his team get beaten by its chief rival. For me, it’s the Yankees and the Packers. For him, it’s the Celtics.
Ice Cube became a Lakers fan just in time for the Magic Johnson era. He got to see his team win titles in 1980 and ’82. As he told Julian Edelman on the Games with Names podcast a few days ago, though, it wasn’t until 1984 that he fully understood what being a Lakers fan was all about.
“Now we’re about to play the Celtics. My brother got this sick-a** look on his face. I’m like, ‘Why you look like that?’ He said, ‘Man, we can’t beat them.’ I was like, ‘What?! Are you out your rabid-a** mind? We got Magic Johnson and Kareem. We gonna beat the s*** out these punks.'”
Cube was understandably filled with confidence. After all, he’d already seen his team win two titles, and they had two of the best players alive. What could go wrong? He didn’t know the history, but his brother did. Cube remembered what his brother said. “He said, ‘Man, I done sat through a lot of these.’ I said, ‘Uh oh.’ He remember, Lakers always losing to the Celtics.”
To that point, the Lakers and Celtics had met in the Finals seven different times. All seven times, the Celtics had won. The eighth would be no different, and Cube’s brother was proven right as Boston took Game 7 behind 20-point efforts from Cedric Maxwell, Dennis Johnson and Larry Bird.
Just as Lakers fans who’d cheered on Jerry West and Elgin Baylor had to watch the Celtics celebrate at their expense, so too was Ice Cube initiated into that unfortunate fraternity.
Sports fans are resilient, and sometimes their loyalty is rewarded. The Lakers got revenge the next year by beating the Celtics in six, then they did it again in 1987. The two teams met again in 2008 and 2010, with the Kevin Garnett-Paul Pierce-Ray Allen Celtics taking the first matchup, but Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol winning the second.
The Celtics and Lakers have now met in the Finals on 12 separate occasions, with Boston coming out on top nine times. That’s far and away the most in NBA history. Across all major North American sports, only one other matchup can compare. The Dodgers and Yankees met in the World Series for the 12th time last year.
Ice Cube has continued to support his team over the years. He can frequently be seen at Lakers games, and later in this podcast, he came out in support of the team’s recent sale to Dodgers owner Mark Walter.
