2008 NBA Finals

[edit] Summary

The 2008 NBA Finals will be the championship series of the 2007-08 National Basketball Association season, and will be the conclusion of this year's postseason. It will pit the West's top seeded Los Angeles Lakers, the winner of the Western Conference Finals, against the East's top seeded Boston Celtics, the winner of the Eastern Conference Finals. The Lakers will appear in the Finals for the first time since 2004 and a record 29th time overall. The Celtics will appear in the Finals for the first time since 1987 and second best 20th time overall.

Overall, the Celtics have won the most championships all-time with 16, and the Lakers are second with 14. Both clubs, the two most successful teams in NBA history, look to renew a long-standing rivalry 21 years after their last NBA Finals meeting in 1987. They narrowly missed out in meeting each other in 2002. This is the 11th time the teams will meet in the championship round (1959, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1969, 1984, 1985, 1987, 2008). The Celtics own an 8-2 record all-time against the Lakers in the NBA Finals. The Celtics won 8 straight series against the Lakers before being defeated in 1985.

The Celtics will have home court advantage due to Boston's (66–16) better record than Los Angeles (57–25). This would be the first time that an Eastern Conference team will have the home court advantage since 1997, when the Chicago Bulls beat the Utah Jazz for the championship. This is also the first time since 2000 that the #1 seeds from both conferences have met in the Finals. The Celtics defeated the Lakers in both regular season contests.

[edit] Series Summary