The 1962 NBA Finals Were the Turning Point in Bill Russell’s Boston Celtics Dynasty

The Elgin Baylor Lakers were one game away from breaking that dynasty.

For young NBA fans, Boston Celtics franchise is mostly associated with the 2008 team that was championed around its Big Three Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett, and Ray Allen. For Generation X NBA fans, Boston Celtics are Larry Bird’s team that won three NBA titles in the 1980s.

At the time, Larry Bird was surrounded by exceptional players such as Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, Dennis Johnson, and Danny Ainge.

However, true NBA fans will all tell you that the Boston Celtics are the team of the legendary Bill Russell. An extraordinary player who managed to win 11 NBA titles in only 13 seasons in the league. The two years Bill Russell didn’t win the supreme title, he reached the NBA Finals the first time and the Eastern Divisional Final the second time.

The Celtics team that crushed the NBA in the 1960s is what one dynasty is all about. They even managed to win eight titles in a row from 1959 to 1966.

Reading what I have just written, you might think that everything was easy for this Celtics team led by the legendary Bill Russell. It would be a mistake to believe that. If Celtics won all those titles during the 1960s, they had to fight fierce battles against the Lakers of Elgin Baylor and Jerry West every time.

The NBA rivalry between the Lakers and the Celtics that we all know today was born at that time. During that decade, the Lakers and Celtics met seven times in NBA Finals.

While the Celtics won every time, there was one year when things came very close to tipping the scales in the Lakers’ favor. In 1962, the Lakers were one game away, an even one shoot away, from breaking Bill Russell’s Celtics dynasty.

History can never be rewritten, but if those 1962 Lakers of Elgin Baylor had won the supreme title, it is quite possible that the rest of the 1960s would have been a completely different story.

So let’s take a look back at these 1962 NBA Finals, which marked a turning point in the domination of the Celtics on the league in the 1960s.