Big 3 leads Boston to big win and a long-awaited championship

BOSTON — It's the reason Paul Pierce stuck around when the losses mounted and the end was far from clear. The reason Ray Allen was acquired as a draft-day consolation prize. And the reason Kevin Garnett agreed to leave the only pro team he'd ever known.

The Big Three has won the Big One.

The Boston Celtics rode their three All-Stars to their 17th championship on Tuesday night, blowing by the Los Angeles Lakers with a stunning show of second-quarter scoring to win 131-92 in Game 6 of the NBA finals.

Pierce, the finals MVP, had 17 points and 10 assists in the clincher, Garnett had 26 points with 14 rebounds, and Allen returned from a red-eye from the coast and a poked eye in the lane to add 26 points, including an NBA finals record-tying seven 3-pointers.

It was the first NBA title for each of them, and the first for the league's most-decorated franchise since the original Big Three of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish won No. 16 in 1986. Danny Ainge was the point guard for that team and the general manager for the one that won 66 games a season after winning 24 -- the biggest turnaround in NBA history.

The Celtics also joined the 1975 Golden State Warriors and the '77 Trail Blazers as the only teams to win it all a year after missing the playoffs.

It's not hard to see why.

Last year's team featured Pierce and a passel of young players who showed promise individually but little sign of snapping the longest championship drought in franchise history. After their legendary luck deserted them in the lottery, leaving them with a worst-case fifth pick in a two-star draft, Ainge wheeled the first-rounder for Allen.

That was enough to convince Garnett to sign an extension, and Ainge cobbled together an unprecedented 7-for-1 deal for the final piece in the new Big Three.

With the best record in the NBA during the regular season, the Celtics earned home court for the playoffs -- and they needed it. They won all four games at home in the first two rounds to reach the Eastern Conference finals, then dispatched Detroit in six games.

In the finals, there were more bumps for the Big Three.

Pierce was carried off by his teammates after what turned out to be an inconsequential knee injury in Game 1. Allen's shooting deserted him for long stretches, and then he rushed to the hospital after Game 5 in Los Angeles to be with his sick child.

After flying all night, he pronounced himself ready to play. Then, in the first half, he was raked across the left eye and went to the locker room.

It didn't stop him from going 7-of-9 from 3-point range, giving him a record 22 in the NBA finals.

For Garnett, the title was the one thing missing from a potential Hall of Fame career, and the finale gave him a sense of redemption after a Game 5 performance -- 13 points and 14 rebounds, but some key missed free throws down the stretch -- that he called "garbage."

On Tuesday, he went from garbage to garbage time.

All three stars came out -- together -- with 4:01 left in the game, and Pierce went immediately to give coach Doc Rivers an emotional embrace. While the Celtics reserves -- a big advantage for Boston in the series -- continued to build on the lead, the starters yukked it up on the bench just as they did through the laugher of a season.

As soon as the clock stopped, it was Gino time: The scoreboard showed the disco-era American Bandstand clip that the Celtics have been using to celebrate victories all season. A shaggy man in a "Gino" T-shirt danced on the scoreboard, and Pierce stood up on the bench to frolic.