For someone like me who bleeds Celtic green watching the 2011 version of the team limp into the postseason and lose to the hated Heat left me with plenty of nostalgic longings for the 80s. So today I'm going to repair my fragile psyche by looking back to the first Celtic championship of my favorite decade.

At the end of Larry Bird's rookie season of 79-80 Red Auerbach completed part 2 of what may be the most lopsided trade in professional sports history. He had the 1st and 13th picks in the 1980 NBA Draft from trading Bob McAdoo to the Pistons for M. L. Carr the year before and traded them (picks 1 and 13) to the Golden State Warriors for center Robert Parish and the Warriors' first round pick (3rd overall). He then used that pick to select University of Minnesota power forward Kevin McHale. (Think about that for a minute: in essence Auerbach got Robert Parrish, Kevin McHale and M.L. Carr for Bob McAdoo. They don't make trades like that anymore.)

The Celtics went 62-20 in the regular season. In the Eastern Conference Finals however they fell behind to the 76ers 3-1 and it seemed like another trophy-less season was in store. But the Celts pulled together to force a game 7 in The Garden which they won 91-90. There was no stopping them after that and they went on to win the first of 3 trophies with the 'real' Big Three.

So without further ado here are the '81 Celtics vanquishing the Houston Rockets in game 6 of the '81 Finals to win it all. Excuse the poor quality; it was 30 years ago after all.



There, I feel better.