Preserving Red’s legacy

Boston ’s victory over Los Angeles in this year’s NBA Finals prevented Lakers coach Phil Jackson from overtaking the late Celtics icon Red Auerbach in the standings for the most championships.

Jackson and Auerbach are tied as the winningest coach ever in terms of titles won. They’ve got nine apiece.

Auerbach delivered nine championships to Beantown, including eight in a row until his retirement after the Celtics beat Los Angeles in a seven-game series in 1966. Auerbach epitomized Celtic pride and tradition. He immortalized the practice of lighting a cigar with the game on ice – in the Celtics favor, of course.

To dignify Auerbach, the Celtics retired jersey No. 2 in his memory (he died in Oct. 2006) – emblematic as the second most influential person in Boston history after founder Walter Brown who was honored with No. 1.

Celtics general manager Danny Ainge paid tribute to coach Doc Rivers for outclassing Jackson in the Finals and made special mention of preserving Auerbach’s legacy.

“I know what a coach goes through and how draining it is,” said Ainge.  “I’m just so happy for Doc and beating a great coach like Phil and keeping him from passing Red in championships.”

Boston Herald sports columnist Steve Buckley said: “Red Auerbach created Celtic pride and Danny Ainge brought it back.”

Ainge, who played eight seasons for the Celtics and was on two title teams, masterminded the off-season deals that brought Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen, James Posey and Eddie House to the fold. He also signed up free agents P.J. Brown and Sam Cassell, a pair of 38-year-old retreads, to bolster the second unit with their experience in anticipation of the pressure in the playoffs.

As for Jackson who earns $10 million a year to coach the Lakers, he was clearly outsmarted by Rivers. The Zen Master was repeatedly a step behind in mid-game adjustments and solving match-up imbalances.

Jackson said the Celtics never gave the Lakers a chance in Game 6.

“I thought we played on our heels from the very get-go,” he said. “They overran us. (Kevin) Garnett knocked Pau (Gasol) down in the lane and scored an easy basket in the first four or five possessions and set kind of a tone that they were going to establish an aggressive form and we never met that energy all night. So we have to get some players if we’re going to come back and repeat, to have that kind of aggressiveness that we need.”

Jackson, 62, introduced an intellectual dimension to coaching when he reached out to his players with spirituality, meditation and soul-searching. In a league dominated by egocentric superstars, Jackson was successful in bringing a sense of unity to the nine teams that he led to championships. Somehow, Jackson was able to inspire the likes of Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant to sacrifice their individual goals for the good of the team because as the saying goes, the whole is bigger than the sum of its parts.

By the way, Jackson now calls himself a Zen Christian. “Merging Zen and Christianity allows me to reconnect with my spiritual core and begin to integrate my heart and mind,” said Jackson. “It’s so easy for the media to call me a Zen Master. In truth, what I really am is a meditator who’s sitting at the edge of the culture and looking in.”

Instead of passing out books by Nietzsche and Langston Hughes to his players, Rivers resorted to good, old-fashioned straight talk. Keeping it simple was his motto and the Celtics didn’t complicate things in wrapping up the title in six.

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Los Angeles Daily News writer Ramona Shelburne wrote that live feeds of the NBA Finals were broadcast to 205 countries in 46 languages. There were 40 on-site broadcasters who each shot pre-game “unilaterals” beamed the world over via satellite.

I was privileged to be interviewed by Shelburne for her story that appeared in the June 14 issue.

Here’s what she quoted me as saying:  “When the games are on back home, it’s 9 o’clock in the morning but there’s total paralysis, everyone is glued to their sets. It’s a big honor for us to be here because millions of Filipinos want to be here and it’s our responsibility to share what we’re experiencing to the people back home. The basketball IQ of the average Filipino fan is extremely high.”

Chino Trinidad and I, covering for Solar Sports, were also interviewed by writers from the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald and NBA.com.

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During the NBA Finals, PBA star Danny Seigle of Magnolia texted to extend his greetings to Bryant’s physical therapist.

“I’m a Celtic fan,” said Seigle. “If you run into Kobe’s physical therapist Judy Seto, please send her my regards. She was my physical therapist for six months back in 2003.”

After the Celtics surged to a 3-1 series lead, Seigle predicted there would be a Game 6 in Boston.

“I have a feeling Kobe will make sure it goes back to Boston. He was looking more to get his teammates involved early and it was working in the first half. But his teammates didn’t respond well in the second. The Big Three played solid but it was that adjustment (of sliding James Posey from three to four to create the mismatch against Lamar Odom who sagged to defend the interior) that made Posey the deciding factor. So no team has ever recovered from 1-3 in the finals. This means you guys will be coming home sooner than later.”