Connections easy to find
SAN FRANCISCO — Jaylen Brown is starting the NBA Finals on the road. Except it might seem like a homecoming for him, in a couple of ways.
Brown plays for the Celtics, who visit the Warriors for Games 1 and 2 of the NBA Finals that started Thursday night.
Game 1 ended too late for this edition.
Brown played his one year of college basketball just on the other side of San Francisco Bay at Cal.
If that wasn’t enough, one of his teammates with the Bears that season was Nick Kerr — the son of Warriors coach Steve Kerr. It all played a role in giving Brown his introduction to the NBA.
“Watching, learning, studying,” Brown said. “Being here at Cal, at Berkeley, going to a lot of games. Being on the floor. ... Long before I got to the NBA or before I got to the NBA, I got to talk to those guys.”
Now here he is, playing against the Warriors for a title.
The Warriors’ Klay Thompson can relate. He grew up a Lakers fan, which means he’s basically obligated to have a certain disdain for the Celtics. And when he was a rookie, playing against a Celtics team that featured Ray Allen, Paul Pierce and Kevin Garnett, Thompson had what he calls his “welcome to the NBA” moment.
“Just a couple years before, I was watching them battle Kobe (Bryant) and Pau (Gasol) in the finals, and I was just mesmerized by how great those teams were, both the Lakers and the Celtics,” Thompson said.
“So life comes full circle, now being able to play them in the Finals.”
For the record, Thompson wasn’t star-struck that first night against the Celtics.
In that game, he led the Warriors with 26 points — although the Celtics prevailed 105-103.
Steve Kerr, like Thompson, is a California kid. He was in the last row of upper-deck seats of the old Forum for one of those Lakers-celtics finals matchups, the mystique of it all not lost on him.
“Some of my favorite memories as a player were playing in Boston Garden,” Kerr said. “I remember starting a game early in my career — we had a couple guys injured — and going out to half court and bumping fists. Larry Bird actually said, ‘Good luck, Steve.’ I was like, ‘You too, Larry.’ I was like, ‘What is happening right now?’ It was surreal.”
Kerr had 10 points and eight assists that night for the Suns. Bird had 29 and the Celtics won.
The ties between the teams even extend to ownership. Warriors Co-executive Chairman and CEO Joe Lacob grew up in Massachusetts and was a minority owner of the Celtics for five years — including the 2008 title year — before buying the Warriors.
“I grew up in the 1960s in a place called New Bedford, Mass., until I was about 13 years old,” Lacob said.
“And you know, I was listening with a transistor radio by my ear to the Celtics and Sam Jones and K.C. Jones and John Havlicek and all these guys, Bill Russell.
“So, it certainly has a place in my memory banks and in my heart.”