NBA CHAMPIONSHIP / Lakers vs. Celtics : WHAT THE OTHERS ARE SAYING : Abdul-Jabbar and End of the Celtics’ Streak Are the Focal Points

Here are the opening paragraphs of game stories by some of the nation’s sportswriters who covered the Lakers’ victory over the Boston Celtics on Sunday:

Dan Shaughnessy, Boston Globe:

July magazines are on racks in newsstands. The Red Sox look like they might make things interesting after all. Your hedges probably need a good cropping. We have postponed summer long enough.

With 61 seconds left, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar tossed one final feathery sky hook through the rim. Thus, the man who has somehow successfully reversed the aging process put his final touch on L.A.’s 111-100 Game 6 championship-clincher over the late World Champion Celtics.

Sam Goldaper, New York Times:

After 26 years and eight times of trying, 38-year-old Kareem Abdul-Jabbar stepped forward and did what no other Laker player had been able to accomplish--help his team beat the Boston Celtics in the championship round.

Elton Alexander, Cleveland Plain-Dealer:

The closet is clean of all the skeletons. The monkey is gone and the wall has come tumbling down.

Bill Halls, Detroit News:

The Los Angeles Lakers, laughing and yelling, doused each other with champagne in a victory celebration that was more symbolic than most of them realized.

When the Lakers defeated the Boston Celtics, 111-100, yesterday afternoon to win the NBA championship series, they stopped one of basketball’s longest and most humiliating losing streaks.

Harvey Araton, New York Daily News:

There were early signs. Celtic layups sat on the rim, sat there waiting for the Boston Garden spirits to help them along, and nothing happened. The shots wouldn’t fall, from inside or outside.

The loose balls went the other way, the clutch shots, the key fouls. The cold hand Larry Bird carried all through the playoffs stayed with him to the end. The five men who carried the Celtics stayed in too long to hold up against the talent of the Lakers.

Earl Bloom, Orange County Register:

Pat Riley offered an innovative idea in jewelry design Sunday afternoon.

“My championship ring is going to have a have a parquet floor on it,” the Laker coach said.

How fitting.

For his team staked its place in history on Boston Garden’s famous playing surface, leaving it with an NBA championship earned in an 111-100 victory over the Boston Celtics.

Robert Falkoff, Houston Post:

When it really counted, Celtic mystique was simply no match for Laker motivation.

So much for the championship banners, the ghosts of Boston Garden and all the history books that suggested Los Angeles couldn’t beat the Celtics on the road in the big game.

Peter May, Hartford Courant:

Three thousand miles away, the carrot juice cocktails and mimosas were raised in triumph. Skateboarders, surfers and sun worshipers paused to salute the new champions.

And so did the old champions.

The Celtics’ reign as NBA kingpins turned out to be as precarious and short-lived as the 15 before them. They went from the Rose Garden and presidential paeans to Death Valley in less than a year, surrendering their crown to the Lakers Sunday in a 111-100 season-ending stinker.

Kevin Kernan, New York Post:

For more than a quarter of a century, the Lakers have been tormented men. Eight times they confronted the Celtics and eight times Red Auerbach mockingly blew smoke in their faces.

Never was the humiliation more cruel than last season when the Celtics not only stole the championship from the Lakers, but took part of their manhood, proclaiming to the world that L.A. had choked.

The torment, the pain, the suffering finally ended yesterday.

Norm Frauenheim, Arizona Republic:

Jerry West and Elgin Baylor can smile today. Their legacy is complete. The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Boston Celtics. Finally.

The Celtics have been the Lakers one flaw for 26 years. No matter how successful the Lakers were, the Celtics were always there to remind them of their mortality. The evil that the Lakers did in Boston lived after them.

For generations, Celtic green taunted and tarnished their image. The Lakers were the team with green bucks in their wallet and green apples in their throats.

No more. The past was purged Sunday.

Jan Hubbard, Dallas Morning News:

Spirits of Celtics past rumbled menacingly. Boisterous Bostonians invoked the names of Russell, Havlicek and Cousy, pointed up to the championship banners, down to the historic parquet floor, directly to the throats of the Los Angeles Lakers and screamed for tradition to triumph.

An ageless warrior with a majestic sky hook epitomized the determination of a team maligned for its lack of heart, however. The Lakers freed themselves from the demons of the immediate and distant past by winning the 1985 NBA championship with a convincing 111-100 victory over the Boston Celtics Sunday afternoon.

Bob Sakamoto, Chicago Tribune:

Walking tall to the post-game interview podium, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, all 7-foot, 2-inches of him, was drenched in vindication.

The shower of Moet & Chandon champagne had seemingly cleansed the Los Angeles Lakers’ captain of a leprosy, bathed away all the public soilings administered by the Boston Celtics. Like a freshly scrubbed baby bouncing into a new world, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s future never looked so bright because a blot on his history had been expunged.

Anthony Cotton, Washington Post:

On the occasion of the 221st-consecutive sellout at Boston Garden, with 15 championship banners hanging from the ceiling, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar scored six straight points late in the fourth quarter and the Los Angeles Lakers held off the Celtics, 111-100, to win the NBA championship Sunday.

Ish Haley, Dallas Times Herald:

As soon as the Lakers finished wrestling the NBA championship away from the previously intimidating Celtics, 4-2, with a surprising 111-100 clincher Sunday in Boston Garden, the search for appropriate parallels and perspectives commenced at a pace furious enough to startle the local cabdrivers.

Pointing to the historical aspects, each Laker seemed to believe his victory speech was being recorded by Harvard historians instead of a bunch of perspiring sportswriters, who after seven weeks of playoffs, were more concerned about whether they had one last pair of clean shorts for the flight home.