The Celtics lost a rematch to the Lakers in the 1985 NBA Finals because both teams had essentially the same roster.
A month before the start of the 1985-86 season, legendary Celtics executive Red Auerbach traded two-time champion and 1981 NBA Finals MVP Cedric Maxwell to the Los Angeles Clippers for former UCLA star big man Bill Walton, the 1978 NBA MVP who had been plagued by injuries throughout his career.
Walton won the Sixth Man of the Year award for a Boston team that featured a starting five of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish, Danny Ainge and Dennis Johnson.
Bird won his third consecutive NBA MVP Award and the Celtics finished the regular season with an NBA-record 40-1 record at the Boston Garden.
The Celtics advanced to the NBA Finals for the third straight year, while the Lakers lost to the Rockets in the Western Conference Finals.
That Rockets team was coached by former Celtics head coach Bill Fitch, who led Boston to a win over Houston in the 1981 NBA Finals. In addition to his former team, Fitch will face former assistant KC Jones, who became the Celtics head coach after Fitch resigned following the 1982-83 season.
In the 1986 NBA Finals, the Celtics defeated the Rockets and their “Twin Towers” star big men, Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson, in six games to win the championship.
Bird was named NBA Finals MVP for the second time in his career, after averaging 24.0 points, 9.7 rebounds and 9.5 assists in the series, nearly achieving a triple-double, and averaging a series-high 2.7 steals per game.
The championship was Auerbach's seventh as part of the front office and the 16th with the Celtics as a head coach and executive combined.
The Lakers defeated the Celtics in the 1987 NBA Finals, and Boston's Big Three of Bird, McHale and Parish won three championships with the Celtics.
