The 30 greatest NBA team rivalries in league history
21. Best NBA rivalries of all-time: Boston Celtics vs. Cleveland Cavaliers
There are two distinct points to this rivalry, one where the Boston Celtics and the Cleveland Cavaliers each had their stretch of dominance. One came slightly before the start of the new decade and the other mid-way through it. The one factor in all of it was LeBron James, whose growth vastly swung the pendulum.
This was originally a battle between Boston’s Big Three against the lone warrior that was James. Such a gap in the overall talent between the two teams surely wasn’t enough for Cleveland to make up. Even at a younger age, James proved otherwise, doing all he could to give his Cavaliers a chance, even if it wasn’t enough.
The closest he ever got came during Boston’s run to the 2008 NBA Championship. It was Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Semifinals, a scenario no opponent should want to be in matched up against arguably the best team in the world at the time.
James did his best to step up to the gargantuan task in front of him, but right there to match “The King” was Paul Pierce. The two went at each other, as James finished with 45 and Pierce with 41. Ultimately, the Celtics pulled out a five-point victory in one of the greatest one-on-one duels in league history.
They would meet again in 2010 with the results unchanged sans for a seventh game. The ramifications were different, however, prompting James to take his talents to South Beach in pursuit of greater reinforcements for this roadblock constantly in his path.
When these teams next met again in 2015, everything had changed. Gone was the Big Three, while James was a new player having won two titles with the Miami Heat. It was the Cavaliers who now had the dominant superteam, one that wound up bullying the Celtics in that first-round series, along with an utter thrashing in the 2017 Eastern Conference Finals.
Come 2018, James’ superteam had crumbled, but that didn’t stop his newfound championship-level greatness from elevating his Cavaliers back to the conference finals. In his way was an upstart Boston team that had lost two of its best players, yet still managed to power through.
The result was a back-and-forth seven-game series with just a single road victory by Cleveland in that final game. It was James’ eighth straight appearance in the NBA Finals, having pushed the knife further into the team that once had his number all those years ago.