BOSTON - Lots of Larry Bird-Magic Johnson talk on both sides of this matchup. Luke Walton spent part of his teenage years in the Boston area cheering on the great mid-1980s Celtics teams. Now he’s a valued Lakers reserve. He said he went by his former home in Cambridge a few days ago and stopped at the park he shot around in. “[Bird] was our idol. Even though our dad played on the team, we had the shirts with [Bird’s] name on them. We went to his house for dinner, played Nintendo with him.”

The Celts’ Sam Cassell is always quick with a story. He grew up in Baltimore and liked Bird, not Magic. “I was the only kid in Baltimore who loved Bird. They used to say, ‘Why Bird?’ Why not Bird?”

His admiration for Larry Legend caught Cassell some heat on the tough city playgrounds. When he’d say he had the next game, his friends would mock him with “You can’t play next. Go to French Lick and play with Bird.”

kmcnamar@projo.com