The Celtics–Lakers rivalry is a National Basketball Association (NBA) rivalry between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers. The Celtics and the Lakers are the two most storied franchises in the NBA, and the rivalry has been called the greatest in the league. The teams have met a record 12 times in the NBA Finals, with their first such meeting being in . They would both go on to dominate the league in the 1960s and 1980s, facing each other in the Finals six times in the 1960s (with the Celtics winning all six) , three times in the 1980s (with the Lakers winning two out of three), and, more recently, in 2008 (Celtics victory) and 2010 (Lakers victory). The teams also won 3 of the ten 10 titles of the 1970s, (the Lakers in 1972, the Celtics in 1974 and 1976), but they did not face each other in the NBA Finals during that decade.
The two teams have won the two highest numbers of championships in the NBA: the Celtics have won 18, and the Lakers have won 17 (12 in Los Angeles and 5 in Minneapolis). Together, they account for 35 of the 78 championships (or 45%) in NBA history, and were tied for the most titles with 17 apiece from 2020 until 2024. As of the 2023 offseason, the Celtics and Lakers have a .5918 and .5915 all-time winning records respectively. As of the end of the 2023–24 season, Boston is the only team with a winning overall record against the Lakers.
The rivalry became slightly less intense when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson both retired in the early 1990s. However, the intensity picked up again in 2008, when the two teams met in the NBA Finals for the first time since 1987, with the Celtics winning the series 4–2. They met again in the 2010 NBA Finals, which the Lakers won in 7 games. Although the rivalry is primarily known for the Finals meetings of the past, the two teams remain strong rivals to this day.
History 1950s: Boston Celtics and the Minneapolis Lakers dynasty During the first decade of the NBA in the 1950s, the Minneapolis Lakers had the first NBA dynasty. Minneapolis would win the first ever Championship Series of the newly formed NBA in 1950 (three BAA Finals were played between 1947–1949 and retroactively counted as NBA Championships, one of which was won by the Lakers in 1949). Under Hall of Fame head coach John Kundla, and with the NBA's first superstar in George Mikan, they would win three more titles in 1952, 1953, and 1954. The Celtics would emerge behind early NBA star Bob Cousy by winning the 1957 NBA Finals and losing in 1958.
The first NBA Finals match-up between the two teams was in 1959 when on April 9, the Boston Celtics swept the Minneapolis Lakers 4–0 for the first sweep in the history of the NBA Finals. This would mark the first Finals loss for the previously dominant Lakers, and the first of eight straight titles for Boston.
1960s: Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics dynasty The Lakers relocated to Los Angeles in 1960. It was after this move, and during this decade, that the rivalry would truly escalate. The two teams emerged as the strongest in the NBA, featuring greats such as Bill Russell, Tom Heinsohn, John Havlicek, Sam Jones and head coach Red Auerbach for Boston and Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Gail Goodrich, and coach/GM Fred Schaus for Los Angeles. However, it would ultimately prove to be the decade of the Celtics, who won the finals every year in the 1960s except for 1967. The Lakers would be the Celtics opponent in six of those series: 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968, and 1969. The Celtics won all of those match-ups. Three of those series (1962, 1966, and 1969) went seven games. The Celtics win over the Lakers in 1966 marked an unprecedented eight consecutive championships, the longest streak of any North American professional sports team."Unbreakable" Sports Records (The World Almanac) worldalmanac.com, accessed April 13, 2007.
The Lakers acquired Wilt Chamberlain in 1968, which brought the personal rivalry between him and Bill Russell, previously a feature of the 76ers–Celtics rivalry, to Celtics–Lakers. The Lakers posted the best record in the West during the 1968–1969 season. By contrast, the aging Celtics struggled to obtain the fourth seed, with Russell and Jones playing in their final seasons. Despite this, the Celtics upset the Philadelphia 76ers and the New York Knicks and made it to the Finals. The Lakers had home court advantage for the first time and won the first two games, but the Celtics rebounded to force and win a dramatic Game 7 at the Los Angeles Forum, defying Laker's owner Jack Kent Cooke's infamous prediction of a Lakers celebration. West was named Finals MVP despite being on the losing team, but it was small consolation in a decade where the Lakers went without a championship, every one of their Finals' losses in that decade coming at the hands of the Celtics.
The 1969 Finals also caused a deterioration in the relationship between Russell and Chamberlain, who had previously been friends despite their rivalry, into one of intense loathing, when Chamberlain took himself out of the decisive Game 7 with six minutes left, and Russell thereafter accused Chamberlain of being a malingerer and of "copping out" of the game when it seemed that the Lakers would lose. Chamberlain (whose knee was so bad that he could not play the entire offseason and ruptured it in the next season) was livid at Russell and saw him as a backstabber. The two men did not talk to each other for over 20 years until Russell attempted to patch things up, although he never uttered a genuine apology. When Chamberlain died in 1999, Chamberlain's nephew stated that Russell was the second person he was ordered to break the news to.
1970s: Championships but no rematch The Celtics and Lakers both found success in the 1970s, but there would be no rematch between the two teams.
The start of the decade saw the Lakers' woes in the NBA Finals continue, with a loss to the New York Knicks in 1970. However, the Lakers rebounded two years later with a 33-game win streak in the regular season—a record which still stands. And to win the 1972 NBA Finals and their first championship in Los Angeles, also against the Knicks. This would also prove to be Laker great Jerry West's only NBA title. The following year, the Lakers again faced the Knicks in the 1973 NBA Finals and lost. They would not make it to the Finals again in this decade, but in 1975 they acquired Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
The Celtics won the NBA Finals in 1974, and won again in 1976, under the leadership of coach Tom Heinsohn and players Dave Cowens, Paul Silas and Jo Jo White.
Neither team won another championship until the 1980s. However, the foundation for the renewed Celtics–Lakers rivalry of the 1980s was actually laid down in college basketball of the late 1970s. During the 1978–79 NCAA season, Michigan State was led by Magic Johnson to the championship game of the NCAA Tournament, where they faced Indiana State University, which was led by senior Larry Bird. In what was the most-watched college basketball game ever, Michigan State defeated Indiana State 75–64, and Johnson was voted Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four. Johnson would go on to be drafted by the Lakers, and Bird by the Celtics. The personal rivalry formed by these two basketball greats during college would transfer to their NBA careers, and reignite the rivalry between the two storied franchises that they came to represent.
1980s: Showtime Lakers dynasty and Larry Bird The Celtics–Lakers rivalry was renewed in the 1980s, in large part due to the personal rivalry between Bird and Johnson. Magic said of the games against the Celtics, "when the new schedule would come out each year, I'd grab it and circle the Boston games. To me, it was The Two and the other 80." Similarly, Bird said that, "the first thing I would do every morning was look at the box scores to see what Magic did. I didn't care about anything else."
The Showtime Lakers struck the first blow, winning the 1980 NBA Finals against the Philadelphia 76ers. The following year, behind the "Big Three" of future Hall of Famers Bird, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish, the Celtics won the 1981 NBA Finals against the Houston Rockets.
The Celtics lost the 1982 Eastern Conference Finals to the 76ers, and along with it the possibility of a rematch with the Lakers. However, the final game of that series is memorable to the rivalry because Boston fans chanted for the 76ers, who were just about to eliminate their Celtics, to "Beat L.A.!" Despite the encouragement, the 76ers lost the 1982 NBA Finals to the Lakers, who were led by new head coach Pat Riley. However, the 76ers defeated the Lakers the following year in the 1983 NBA Finals. The 1982–1983 season would also be the rookie year of Laker James Worthy, another Hall of Famer in the storied rivalry.James Worthy , nba.com/history. Retrieved January 15, 2007.
The Celtics would get a new head coach in K.C. Jones, who was also a former Celtics player, and two teams finally had their long-awaited rematch in the 1984 NBA Finals, a seven-game series that had many moments, including a 137–104 blowout in Game 3 that led Bird to call his Celtic teammates "sissies", the Kevin McHale takedown of Laker forward Kurt Rambis which led to increased physical aggression by both teams, the heat of the infamously un-airconditioned Boston Garden in Game 5, and Cedric Maxwell's 24-point performance in Game 7. The Celtics went on to win in seven games, increasing their record of Finals' series victories against the Lakers to 8–0.
The following year, the Lakers finally had their revenge, winning the 1985 NBA Finals by taking Game 6 in Boston Garden, becoming the first visiting team to win an NBA championship in that arena before Golden State Warriors repeated it in 2022. They did this despite a game 1 34-point loss, dubbed the Memorial Day Massacre, in which Kareem Abdul-Jabbar apologized to Laker fans for their performance after the game. Nevertheless, they rebounded to win four of the next five games. Lakers owner Jerry Buss famously remarked that "this has removed the most odious sentence in the English language. It can never again be said that 'the Lakers have never beaten the Celtics'".
The Celtics rebounded the following year to win the 1986 NBA Finals against the Rockets. In the 1987 NBA Finals, the two teams met for a tie-breaker of their 1980s Finals matches, and the Lakers once again emerged victorious in six games, with the iconic image of Johnson's junior skyhook. This series marked the end of an era for the Celtics. They did not reach the Finals again until 2008. The Lakers, meanwhile, went on to win the 1988 NBA Finals against the Detroit Pistons, before losing to the Pistons the following year in 1989, and win titles again in 2000, 2001 and 2002, all while the Celtics wallowed in mediocrity.