01:00 AM EST on Sunday, February 13, 2005

1957-86 CELTICS

YEARS: 30.

CHAMPIONSHIPS: 16.

NBA FINALS APPEARANCES: 18.

Granted, 11 of the 16 titles were won with Bill Russell at center. But the Celtics reloaded not once but twice, winning two titles in the mid-1970s behind John Havlicek, Dave Cowens and Jo Jo White, and three more in the '80s with the Larry Bird/Robert Parish/Kevin McHale troika. They had only two brief dips during those 30 years (1969-71 and 1977-79), never going more than three seasons before rebuilding themselves into serious championship contenders.

Red Auerbach -- the architect of each of these teams -- was never a particularly graceful winner, and he took great exception to the media's annointment of the Lakers as the NBA's new dynasty prior to the 1984 finals between Boston and Los Angeles. When the Celtics prevailed in seven games, Auerbach literally grabbed the microphone out of CBS' Brent Musberger's hands at the trophy ceremony and bellowed to the nation: "Here's your dynasty, right here!!"

Boorish? Perhaps. But absolutely correct.

(Another amazing fact: The Celts won championships with five different coaches -- Auerbach, Russell, Tommy Heinsohn, Bill Fitch and K.C. Jones.)

Honorable mention: The Lakers are creeping up the all-time list of championships won -- they now have 14 -- but they've done it mostly with three separate, and unconnected, bursts of success. They won their first five titles in Minneapolis, between 1949 and 1954. After a single championship in 1970, they won five more in a nine-year span between 1980 and '88. Then the Shaq/Kobe Lakers won three in a row from 2000-02. But the vast distance between each of these periods prevents the 1949-2002 Lakers from qualifying as a true dynasty.

-- ART MARTONE