Sideline Cut: THE QUESTION was plain enough: "What did the guy from South Africa say about adversity?"

Millions of basketball fans across the globe tuned into the NBA finals in the wee hours of yesterday morning could only assume Doc Rivers was referring to Nelson Mandela in trying to inspire his Boston Celtics during a tricky phase of their first championship game against the Los Angeles Lakers in 21 years.

You would hardly know it from the coverage in this country, but the renewal of the hallowed rivalry between the Lakers and Celtics is the sports event engaging most human beings on the planet this week. It will kill the French Open and kill the golf. It may even take its toll on the beautiful game.

The reason there is so little talk about the European Championships is that most continentals - including the football players - will be sitting up late watching the basketball beamed from the far side of the Atlantic. But following the games has been a little trickier for Irish fans. Ireland is one of the few remaining countries without live television access to the basketball finals. The ever-vigilant and frighteningly expansive minded NBA chiefs are cognisant of this and have made their games available for free on line for certain impoverished nations. Thus, we join our cousins in Haiti, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Guatemala, Malawi, Bolivia and Belize as the world's charity cases when it comes to watching what is a mainstream sport in practically every other country.

If Brian Cowen saw us listed in that sort of company he would think either (a) the Tiger years were definitely over or (b) the consequences of a No vote to Lisbon were worse than anybody had feared.

Up to now, enthusiasts had listened to the play-off series by resorting to the old-fashioned radio commentaries via the web, but the 11th-hour intervention by the NBA meant their event was there to be enjoyed to the full. The return to form of the Celtics and the Lakers was a godsend for the NBA, who had seen their league slip drastically in the ratings since the (first) retirement of Michael Jordan a decade ago. The Lakers continued to dominate under the dark materials Phil Jackson - the coach who tamed Michael - brought to Tinseltown. But without the presence of their nemesis, the Celtics, the league fell somewhat flat.

Conspiracy buffs can only raise an eyebrow at the series of improbable trades that catapulted these two teams back into contention. Much has been made of the fact Minnesota's general manager, Kevin McHale, the broad-shouldered soldier who remains a cult figure in Boston, revived his ailing old club by swapping the uncommonly tall and brilliant Kevin Garnett (seven feet and moves like Colm Cooper) for a group of merely excellent players. The move was regarded as an old-pals act between McHale and his former shooting guard Danny Ainge, now the boss at the Celtics.

But with Garnett and resident hero Paul Pierce, the Celtics were off and running.

There was much less talk about the arrival in February of Pau Gasol in Los Angeles following an out-of-the-blue trade with the woebegone Memphis Grizzlies. Gasol is a seven-foot Spaniard with a text-book game. He was the perfect foil for the Lakers' Kobe Bryant, a one-man scoring machine who makes Cristiano Ronaldo look painfully shy.

Just like that, the Lakers began motoring toward the play-offs, and as the old-school teams cut all comers down to size, the NBA had, through whatever machinations, recreated the rivalry fans had pined for.

The return of the aristocratic clubs, with the classic east- and west-coast personalities, allowed the NBA ladle out the nostalgia, with talk and footage of the elemental rivalry.

The 1960s boiled down to a battle between the Lakers' self-styled lover-man, Wilt Chamberlain, and Bill Russell, the reserved giant who won eight championships in that period. In the 1980s,the teams clashed repeatedly again, the smiling and debonair Irvin "Magic" Johnson leading the Lakers against Larry Bird, the uncanny country bumpkin who seemed to embody everything the club stood for - honesty, deceptively simple brilliance and antipathy to pretension.

Those games and those years were coloured by real hatred and plenty of brawling but from the distance of 20 years, the protagonists could look back with warm nostalgia. It was notable that while Magic Johnson was working as a studio analyst for game one, Bird stayed thousands of miles away from a hall where he will remain a god. His absence was out of consideration: the mere presence of Bird might have overshadowed the players trying to emulate him.

For years Pierce played through thick and, more often, thin, for the Celtics, the one genuine star on a flickering team. Every time he lifted his head toward the rafters, he would see the 16 white championship banners hanging in the shadows and the retired numbers of the immortals - Russell's 8, McHale's 32, Bird's 33 and so on.

Until this year, it seemed Pierce's destiny to be a great player on a team that had become little more than an artefact of nostalgia. Then, everything exploded and here he was last night, at the centre of the basketball universe. Ironically, Pierce grew up near the LA Forum and, as a child in the 1980s, learned to loathe the Celtics. But minutes after the Celtics had earned their place in this year's final, it was he who resurrected the Celtics chant: "Beat LA!"

In the middle of the third quarter of game one, Pierce collided with his team-mate Kendrick Perkins, crashed to the parquet in apparent agony and was carried from the arena. One can but imagine the global consternation as he was next shown being wheeled down a corridor in a wheelchair. Without Pierce, the series threatened to be a washout. It was during this calamity that Doc Rivers chose to invoke the spirit of Mandela, albeit with almost blasphemous casualness.

Two minutes later, Pierce reappeared in the doorway of the tunnel, and the arena on Causeway Street erupted in the kind of frenzy not heard since Bird was toting his Dukes of Hazzard moustache and genius shooting touch. Pierce had a badly sprained knee and winced his way back onto the floor, but in a 30-second spree, he fired two three-pointers in succession. If there were any ghosts from the 1960s and 1980s left in his mind, that was surely the moment they packed their bags.

Here was a moment to rival anything of the previous 30 years. The Celtics never looked back and took their first home championship game in 21 years with relative ease. The series is best of seven and Bryant left the hall to a din of "Beat LA!" and with his best poker face on.

You could not see behind the smoked windows where the NBA chiefs gather but you can bet they were smiling broadly. It was safe to say the Celtics and Lakers never lost it. Wonder if the South African was watching.