This Boston Celtics-Los Angeles Lakers thing is among the greatest rivalries in sports.
It takes its place next to Celtic v Rangers, Barcelona v Real Madrid, Red Sox v Yankees, Republicans v logic, the All Blacks v your hearts.
The two teams have combined for 30 of the NBA's 61 championships - Boston has won a record 16 championships, Los Angeles is second with 14.
This will be the 11th time they have faced each other in the finals - Boston won the first eight.
The teams' battles in the '60s produced several hard-fought Boston championships.
Despite the Lakers trotting out Hall of Fame players like Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor, Boston routinely beat back Los Angeles throughout the decade. 1969 was to be Celtic great Bill Russell's final season as a player.
In game seven, held at the Los Angeles Forum, Lakers owner Jack Kent Cooke was so confident the Lakers would win that he had thousands of balloons suspended from the arenas rafters and ready to be released when the Lakers won.
Sorry, Jack. Boston won Russell's final game 108-106.
"I'll never forget it," Jerry West said. "It was the most embarrassing thing I'd ever seen."
In the '80s, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson emerged as cornerstones of the Celtics and Lakers.
The teams met in 1984 (a Celtics win), 1985 (a Lakers win) and 1987 (Lakers again).
Their contests eventually turned into sociological case studies as the up-tempo Lakers, with their core of African-American players and Hollywood A-list fans became the choice of black America.
The Celtics seemingly had a disproportionate share of Caucasians and came from a city that still bore racial scars and had a blue-collar, white fan base.
The games in the '80s matched the epic underpinnings.
In the second quarter of game four of the 1984 series, considered by some to be the greatest finals game ever, Boston's Kevin McHale clothleslined Lakers reserve Kurt Rambis as he went in for a lay-up, benches cleared and hostilities reached a fever pitch in Boston as the game wore on with minor scuffles breaking out.
The Celtics would go on to win the game 129-125 in overtime.
"Before Kevin McHale hit Kurt Rambis, the Lakers were just running across the street whenever they wanted," Celtics forward Cedric Maxwell said after the game.
"Now they stop at the corner, push the button, wait for the light, and look both ways."
In game four in 1987, Johnson crushed the souls of Celtics fans when he hit a 20-foot (6m) hook shot at the death to give the Lakers a 107-106 win. (By the way, a 20-foot hook shot is the sporting equivalent of running in a try backwards from about 30m.)By the end of that decade both teams were in a slow decline.
Johnson was diagnosed with HIV and retired abruptly in 1991. Bird retired due to back problems in 1992.
But the Celtics and Lakers had re-energised a declining league and handed the spotlight to the ascending Michael Jordan, who made the league the powerful entertainment titan it is today.
There's no understating how lost each of these franchises were at this time last season. But both teams managed front office coups.
The Celtics acquired All-Stars Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen. The Lakers netted centre Pau Gasol to pair with Kobe Bryant.
The cosmos has done us a favour and pitted the Lakers and Celtics against each other once again.
So, go blow up some balloons, clothesline your most-hated rival and practise your hook shot - I will.
Read Zach Hosseini's blog here
