https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV2Tct4gaUY
On First Take, Stephen A. Smith, Brian Windhorst and Monica McNutt join Molly Qerim to debate if the Boston Celtics are the best team in the NBA.
"I understand that they have 18 championships to the Lakers' 17 championships, I get that, but I also know that this is feeding off a 16-year drought, yeah okay, and I would remind everybody out there that the Boston Celtics, even with the great Bill Russell, with the great (wish Doggy was here) the great Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, and all of these guys, Sam Jones, and list goes on and on, I will remind you, M&M, Windy, that the Boston Celtics have 23 NBA Finals appearances, the Los Angeles Lakers have 32, so yes you do have one more ring, that is fair, but the Los Angeles Lakers have nine more finals appearances, which means that although they have one less title, their time spent in relevancy is significantly more than yours. That would make you the better overall franchise
"I'm just simply saying, guys, 32 appearances in the NBA Finals to 23 matters. Now if you had five or six more championships than the Lakers that would be different, but you only got one more championship than them, but they got nine more appearances than you. I would say that the Los Angeles Lakers is still the best franchise in NBA annals."
by Umbrafile
27 Comments
They have hard capped themselves with the current ownership situation, Stephen A saying stuff for clicks
They certainly haven’t proved it lately!
Stephen A Smith says we’re the best franchise in the NBA, but is out here defending Darvin Ham. Make it make sense
Even a broken clock will show the right time eventually if it’s put on television every fucking day.
All I’ll say is, when I have travelled overseas, I have never seen a Boston Celtics logo anywhere. I have seen the Los Angeles Lakers logo multiple times overseas in different continents.
Biased but since 1980, which has been essentially the start of the modern NBA. Lakers have 11 titles to the Celtics 5. The Lakers historical players also blows the Celtics out of the water.
Lakers are just far more iconic of a franchise, Celtics are closer to the Spurs/Bulls imo. You don’t see superstars clamoring to come to the Celtics the way they do Lakers (even if they don’t make it). Look at the list of Lakers/Celtics top legends and the Lakers are just 6 to 7 of the all time top ten lol.
Celtics top legends: Bill, Bird, Garnett
Lakers top legends: Kareem, Magic, Shaq, LeBron, Kobe, Wilt, West, Baylor.
Lakers is the only team that have finals apearences in every decade of the NBA
Lakers are the best franchise because of what they accomplished under Dr. Buss. Jeanie and co cant rest on her laurels.
Remember when USC was a football juggernaut? What brought them down following the Pete Carroll years to where they hit rock bottom in 2021. Unimaginative administrations followed by head coaching hires all within the USC circle. They finally went out of it when they paid to hire Lincoln Riley. I see a similar situation where the Lakers need to hire somebody outside their family to run basketball operations if they want any hope to pass Boston in titles. I honestly don’t see how we can all see it except for Jeannie and her inner circle.
These sports shows were leading their shows off with Lakers segments while the Celtics were in the middle of the finals. Tells me everything I need to know.
Celtics have majority of their titles from the 60s. With 10 teams in the nba and pre nba/aba merger and no 3 point line, during the civil right movement, when black and white players couldn’t even eat the same table and were using separate bathrooms. Sounds impressive Boston. They’ve won 2 titles in almost 40 years. Those 60s rings are doing a lot of the heavy lifting
I remember in 2008 when Celtics had 17 and we had 14. It’s now 17-18. We’ve had to win twice as much to make up for those 60s rings and we caught them. Them having one more isn’t impressive when they use to have such a big lead on us
Then why is everyone shitting on LeBron because of finals record if apperances are so important?😬
Lakers made Basketball sexy. We brought entertainment to the game, beautiful cheerleaders, floor seats, celebrity tickets along with a history of Winning and superstar free agents wanting to rock the purple and gold.
Not a fan at all of SAS and his takes, but anything pro Lakers spread in the national media airspace, id take any day.
Translation: Laker fans have abandoned our network due to our constant shit talk, doomsaying and malicious coverage. Now we’ll bring Screamin’ a Smith out to try to bring them back.
Even with him saying this, I still believe Stephen A Smith is trash.
There’s a very simple way to make this argument. Since the NBA renaissance began with the drafting of Magic and Bird, the Lakers have 11 championships. That’s nearly twice as many as second place (The Bulls). The Lakers have also had generational players on their roster for most of that time. The end.
Steven A Smith. Can. Eat. A. Dick!
I don’t care what this dude says even if it is positive about the lakers
Final appearances only matter when it’s convenient for peoples’ points lmao
Can’t believe he even forgot to mention our IST banner
By that logic Lebron is above Jordan right? This guy is a dumbass.
Espn told him to get on the Lakers good side so he can have inside scoop from JJ lmmao
I mean this is objectively true, and it’s not even a knock on the Celtics or other really successful franchises like the Spurs. The Lakers win one or more titles every decade. They have the greatest number of players in the top 10 of all time and the top 20 of all time. They have the most recent three-peat and while they had down years in the 2010s and in 2022, they were truly their only true **down** years in comparison to the league as a whole (rather than their own lofty standards) over almost their entire history.
They had a stretch from ‘74 until 2014 when Kobe got hurt and the team needed to tank where they had **three** years out of forty where they were a below .500 team. No one else has a run that even comes close to that other than the Spurs, who had twice as many below .500 seasons in that time. And the Lakers and Spurs have had an equal number of bad seasons since then; five straight for the Spurs, and 2014-2019 + 2022 for the Lakers.
Bron spent more time in the finals than Jordan
It’s not even about the Finals appearances and more so when the 3 point line was implemented (1979) which helped evolve the game to what it is today. Since then the Lakers have won more chips while older titles not being counted going back to the MPLS. With that said, there’s more serious concern with this FO than anything else.
Celtics unfortunately are being run better by the front office than ours.
Sa is ass