The Green-and-Golden Age Renaissance

Green vs. Yellow means a lot to us NBA nuts. The 2008 NBA Finals was the most anticipated, most hyped championship series since the Bulls and Jazz in 1998 and with good reason. The Lakers and the Celtics are essentially the Hatfields and McCoys of any NBA Finals index. Thumb on through the list of matchups from 1959 on and you'll see Lakers vs. Celtics an astonishing 11 times.

The 1970s were essentially skipped over, with the two teams winning titles, but missing each other in the Finals, while the '90s saw little success from either team and only one Finals appearance from the Lakers in '91.

When the teams did meet often, the 1960s and '80s, they were two teams that defined their respective eras and the NBA as a whole. The Elgin Baylor/Jerry West (and later, Wilt Chamberlain) Lakers of the '60s were essentially basketball's Brooklyn Dodgers, perpetually coming up just short in all six encounters against the equivalent of the New York Yankees in Bill Russell and Bob Cousy's Celtics.

The Larry Bird/Kevin McHale/Robert Parish vs. Magic Johnson/Kareem Abdul-Jabbar/James Worthy battles of the '80s gave us three heavyweight fights akin to Muhammad Ali/Joe Frazier. The Lakers took two of the three head-to-head series in 1985 and '87, while the Celtics' win in '84 was nothing short of a seven-game masterpiece.

So we salivated in 2008 to see a new generation of faces on each side. Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett vs. Kobe Bryant with the supporting cast of Lamar Odom and Pau Gasol. The series sure would have been tougher for the Celtics to pull out had the Lakers held on to their 24-point lead in Game 4. As it stands, The Comeback became the Celtics' signature moment, and with a 39-point blowout win in Game 6 for the clincher, it left many feeling the Lakers' effort for the series was lacking.

At the time, we saw it as a rare treat. Tired old San Antonio and Detroit had dominated play in each conference over the last few years and it was kind of a jolt to see a reprise of the classic matchup when both teams had been lost in the doldrums just a year before. Yet now it is quite possible that this could be a reoccurring trend.

Anyone could see the Celtics would defend the crown with the same ferocity with which they earned it. Garnett and Pierce have enough fire to burn down the city of Boston brick by brick, and the even-keeled Allen has enough ice water in his veins to balance the equation out. The team-first approach (say it with me now ... umbuntu!) so successfully employed by coach Doc Rivers ensures that they will not lose sight of the goal. By the way, Boston has come out 20-2 at the quarter mark of this year's season.

The Lakers were favored going into the Finals last year, but after they were dusted in Game 6's 131-92 debacle in Boston, it was only natural to question the team's heart as well as if these were the right pieces in place around Kobe Bryant. If they were to come out flat in 2008-09, few would be surprised. Instead, they used the defeat to fuel them to return to the top and have come out to an 18-3 rampaging of the Western Conference. They almost certainly have their Christmas day rematch with the Celtics at Staples marked on their calendar.

Certainly, it doesn't hurt them to have a healthy Andrew Bynum at their disposal, a weapon they could not count on in their 2008 playoff and Finals run. Bynum's emergence has bumped center Pau Gasol to the power forward slot and relegated former Kobe sidekick Lamar Odom to sixth-man duties. Odom joins Trevor Ariza, Sasha "The Machine" Vujacic, and Jordan Farmar as perhaps the most talented second unit in the NBA.

Developing alongside this story is the fact that the West suddenly does not appear to be the same power conference it was in last year's playoffs. Sure, Denver and Portland are much stronger. Denver having traded out the cancerous Allen Iverson for team leader Chauncey Billups and his NBA title ring while Portland has thrived with its young nucleus and a healthy (relatively speaking) Greg Oden finally showing the world his big man skills.

But these are teams with relatively little experience in winning. Denver regularly makes the playoffs and all but plans out their first round loss while Portland has yet to reach the round of 16 in quite some time. So what about the traditional powers? The Suns have faltered with former coach Mike D'Antoni in New York. Amare Stoudemire is considerably frustrated as the offense now runs through old man Shaq. San Antonio is not off to the dominant start they are used to due to injuries to Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, who have since recovered. While the Spurs can be deceptively quiet in the regular season, it is possible that this long-running Spurs core could be on its last legs.

The Celtics, meanwhile, have to worry about Cleveland and Orlando as the LeBrons are challenging for the best record in the East, as well as the league. Having taken the Celts to the absolute limit in last year's Conference Semis, the Cavs may have the best shot to dethrone the champs. However, they may still have to shed the image of the one-man team in order to do that. The Celtics still get the edge to repeat out East.

So one quarter into the season, when faced with the question who are the league's two best teams, you'd still be hard pressed to say anything but the Celtics and Lakers. In a league where upsets don't come often, the chances of another Celtics/Lakers Finals in 2009 seem bright. When faced with the question of which team is better right now, the answer to that may be your greatest Christmas gift of all.