Yet another world championship was in the bag and the Boston Celtics were running out the final few minutes of garbage time in Game 6 of the 1986 NBA Finals when Tommy Heinsohn, then CBS' top NBA analyst despite the Celtic green tint of his bloodstream, turned his thoughts to the next major event on the league's calendar.

"This draft," he announced, "is a very important draft for the Celtics."

He had no idea how right he was.

That overheated June afternoon marked the 16th time in 29 years that an NBA season had climaxed with a Boston championship. Since Red Auerbach's arrival in 1950, the team's longest drought between titles had been just five years, a near-seamless parade of glory that owed itself to the franchise patriarch's knack for crafty trades and inventive draft maneuvers, not to mention a few timely doses of the luck of the Irish.  read more »

On a Sunday afternoon 21 Junes ago, James Worthy dove for an impossible loose ball and somehow swatted it to a streaking Magic Johnson, whose early third quarter lay-up ignited the crowd and signaled a decisive shift in momentum. From there, the home-standing Lakers, who had trailed the Celtics by five at halftime, breezed to a 106-93 victory that sealed their 10th N.B.A. championship.

In Los Angeles, there was celebration, and three thousand miles east in Boston, where “Beat L.A.!” served in the 1980’s as the unofficial motto that “Yankees suck!” became earlier this decade, there was dejection.

But not in all of Boston. In the city’s black neighborhoods, whose children had been pelted by rocks just 12 years earlier when court-ordered busing had transported them to white South Boston, the Lakers tended to be treated like the home team. Boston, after all, was the town that Bill Russell once labeled “a flea market of racism.”  read more »

Larry Brown, the new coach of the New York Knicks, pulled a stern face and signaled for Harry to do his lay-up. "Go Harry! Hoooooo!" yelled dad. The ball, somewhat miraculously, went through the hoop.

Also-shows were Knicks front office man and former NBA great Isiah Thomas and Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers. The charity: Hoops 4 Hope, a non-profit that sends shoes and uniforms to schoolchildren in South Africa and Zimbabwe.

The coaches circulated among the three different courts leading drills, offering instruction, and leading chants: "1,2,3, Go Knicks!"

Next to Mr. Clarke sat two teenagers, Laura and Heather. They were handing out free samples of Fuze, a fruit drink, of sorts. Heather poured a shot of a mango drink into a paper cup. "Like, if you wanted to take this instead of a multivitamin, it would give you 100 percent of your daily vitamins and minerals" she said.