The 1985-86 Celtics certainly fit that description, winning 67 games in the regular season and going 15-3 in the playoffs (the first round was best-of-five back then) for the franchise’s 16th championship. Bird and friends had defeated the Lakers for the ’84 title and lost to them in ’85. Then they added Bill Walton and Jerry Sichting to a core of Bird, Kevin McHale, Dennis Johnson, Robert Parish, Danny Ainge and Scott Wedman.
“They were right in the midst of their dynastic run as a team,” Riley said. “They were right in the middle of it, as the Lakers were, and we were both trying to find that ultimate identity of being the best in the world by basically measuring them as a standard and we as a standard.