Every once in a while, die hard fans are forced to not only cheer for their own team, but cheer against the other teams. Often, cheering against other teams even takes place when youre team isn’t the one playing them.

For example, the Boston Celtics came into Los Angeles on Christmas Day with a 19 game winning streak, an NBA record making 27-2 win-loss record, and a head up high attitude. The Lakers entered the matchup with a 23-5 record, the #1 record in the Western Conference, and a head coach one win away from achieving 1000 career wins.

The Celtics have had an extremely aggresive strut in their step all season long. Kevin Garnett has never taken this much heat for swearing and yelling on the court at his teammates and fans. Yes, it’s about time people start criticizing has lack of class on the court. Paul Pierce swaggered his way to stupid quotes such as “I am the best player in the world.” Ok, Mr. Wheelchair for 32 seconds for the Hollywood effect man.

Christmas Day couldn’t have been any better than what it was. The Lakers ended up coming away with a 9 point win over the defending champion Celtics and the men in green didn’t have much to say about it. The Boston Celtics came away with some good quotes in recognition of the game.

Doc Rivers mentioned the amazing feat of Phil Jackson winning his 1000th career game as a 17 year coach. “It’s amazing. I mean, he’s one of the greatest coaches of all time, I can guarantee you that I won’t win 1,000 games because I won’t be around that long. It’s just an amazing number. When you throw up 1,000 wins, that says a lot.”

It was even nice to see someone like Kevin Garnett humble up a bit and leave some nice words for the Lakers. “It was my first Christmas game, and I’m obviously blessed to be here,” Garnett said. “There’s a reason why teams are playing on this special day, so it had a playoff energy and a playoff atmosphere to it, absolutely. It’s tough when you lose against anybody. We probably took a step back, but hats off to a good Laker team. Pau made big shots when he had to and Kobe put stress on the defense.”

KG said it right though. Pau Gasol was a really big part of this win and hig clutch play in the fourth quarter was what led the Lakers to victory. “We were pretty physical,” said Gasol, who had three rebounds, five assists and three blocked shots. “We were able to contain them, keep our poise and finish the game off. I had to make sure I took it to them, not settle for easy jumpers. I’m glad I was able to get over that hump of a slow start. It shows we can beat anybody. Hopefully, we’ll build on it.”

Even Phil Jackson commented: “I’m really happy with Pau, he stepped up in that fourth quarter and we really needed him.”

To me, this game was determined early in the fourth quarter however with a block by Andrew Bynum on a Tony Allen layup attempt. The season has a very interesting stat to it in which when the Lakers win, Bynum has a block in every game. In the five Lakers losses however, Bynum only has a block in one of the games.

Enough bragging about the Lakers big win though. Lets continue to stress the Celtics losing and dropping to 27-3. The holiday didn’t exactly improve too much when the Celtics moved on to play their second of a back-to-back against the Golden State Warriors. With an 8 point lead going into the 4th quarter, the Warriors came charging back under the leadership of Stephen Jackson. The Warriors managed to pull out a big win causing the Celts to drop their first consecutive games of the season and to a 27-4 overall record.

Coach Don Nelson of the Golden State Warriors summed this up nicely. “We fired up in the fourth quarter — just the way we drew it up. As they go along in their journey in the NBA, they’re going to have games when the other team gets hot at the wrong time and all of a sudden catches them off guard. So, it’s probably no big thing to them but it’s a very big thing to us.”

With the Celtics two losses in the last two days, they are now allowing the Cleveland Cavaliers and Los Angeles Lakers remain competitive for that much sought after home court advantage throughout the playoffs. The Cavaliers are only one game behind with a 25-4 record. The Lakers sit two games back with a 24-5 record. Surely enough, the Lakeshow takes on the Golden State Warriors tomorrow as the Celtics take on the Sacramento Kings and the Cavaliers take on Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat.

Who will finish with the best record? We shall see, for now, the Lakers must continue to do their job and rack up the wins as Lebron, Pierce, and Garnett rack up a few losses in the coming weeks.