The Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons meeting in the Eastern Conference finals seemed inevitable the moment Kevin Garnett heeded the advice of Pistons point guard Chauncey Billups and left Minnesota to join All-Stars Paul Pierce and Ray Allen in Boston. The only surprise about this matchup is that the Celtics, after plowing through the National Basketball Association (NBA) with a league-best 66 victories, needed two seven-game series to get here.

The Pistons have been the most dominant team in the East for the past six seasons, remaining a constant force during a time when New Jersey, Indiana, Miami and Cleveland have risen and fallen. The Celtics quickly joined the elite this season through NBA Executive of the Year Danny Ainge’s impressive off-season makeover.

The Celtics and Pistons were the two best teams in the NBA this season and they staged three of the most intense and physical games, with Boston winning the last two. But Boston’s postseason struggles against the eighth-seeded Atlanta Hawks and LeBron James‘s Cavaliers, combined with the relative ease with which the experienced Pistons got rid of the Orlando Magic in the second round, has added more intrigue to this highly anticipated series.

“Listen, before the year, people thought it’d be us and Detroit. We believed that, too,” Celtics coach Doc Rivers said on Sunday after his team advanced with a 97-92 Game Seven victory over the Cavaliers, last year’s Eastern Conference champion. The Pistons have “been together longer. They’ve been through the wars a little longer. Having gone through these two [series] has to have helped us a little bit, too. It will be a good series.”

The Pistons are well-rested entering this series, having eliminated the Magic in Game Five exactly one week ago. The break was helpful in allowing Billups to recover from a strained right hamstring that forced him to miss the final two games of the conference semifinals. The All-Star guard has been practicing with the team since Thursday, and Pistons coach Flip Saunders said he expects Billups to be close to full strength. Detroit likely will need a healthy Billups to advance to the NBA Finals for the first time in three years, and even that might not satisfy this team or its fans, Saunders said.

“I think here in Detroit, in order for us to solidify our history here, we probably need to win another championship,” Saunders said in a recent telephone interview. “I think the people here in this area of Detroit think we’ve been here six times and we only have one championship to show for it [in 2004]. That’s why I think this year is a big year for us.”

Rivalry renewed

The series is the renewal of a playoff rivalry that already has played out seven times before, with the Celtics winning four of the meetings. The most memorable contest came in 1987—the last time Boston advanced to the NBA Finals—when Larry Bird stole an inbounds pass from Isiah Thomas and passed to Dennis Johnson for a game-winning layup in Game Five of the Eastern Conference finals.

The Celtics’ rebirth is partly Billups’s fault. When the Timberwolves put Garnett on the trading block last summer, the All-Star forward was apprehensive about leaving the place he had spent the first 12 years of his career. Garnett initially wanted to go to Phoenix, but Billups—who started his career with the Celtics and is one of Garnett’s best friends in the league—put friendship ahead of potential playoff opposition and convinced Garnett that Boston was the best situation for him.

The Celtics had the pieces to be a contender, Pierce and Allen could relieve him from the pressure of carrying a team by himself and Boston was a passionate sports town, Billups told Garnett.

“I just told him that he works too hard and puts too much into it to be done April 15 every single year,” Billups said earlier this season about Garnett, whose Timberwolves missed the playoffs the previous three seasons. “So I told him that he needs to go somewhere where he will at least have a chance at it. He was cutting himself short. It was a wrap and he needed to do what he did.”

Garnett joined Pierce and Allen—who was acquired in a draft-day trade last summer—to restore some of the glory that the Celtics lost while losing 58 games last season. “It’s very gratifying,” said Pierce, who suffered through that miserable year but scored 41 points in Sunday’s clincher. “You go so many years and you go to the point in your career when you were that close. You’re, like, you’re going to cherish these moments. You’re thankful for what the ownership did and for what Danny did to get the team to this point.”

After earning the top seed in the East the past two postseasons and losing in the conference finals to the Miami Heat and Cleveland Cavaliers, respectively, Saunders said he doesn’t expect his team to be short on motivation this time around.

“Our players will have a good edge,” Saunders said. “They look forward to playing against Boston because of the record they had this year. You know you’ve got to play because they have such a great team.”

Piston-Celtics collision was course charted even before season’s tip-off

The Boston Celtics and Detroit Pistons meeting in the Eastern Conference finals seemed inevitable the moment Kevin Garnett heeded the advice of Pistons point guard Chauncey Billups and left Minnesota to join All-Stars Paul Pierce and Ray Allen in Boston.

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