The best part of a Rams vs. Patriots Super Bowl is talking about the Lakers vs. Celtics

The second Patriots-Rams Super Bowl is the first between Boston and Los Angeles, and it’s impossible to have a sports matchup between these two cities without reminiscing about the Lakers and Celtics.

Those are the two premiere franchises in the history of the NBA, with the Celtics and Lakers combining for 33 of the league’s 69 championships. They have met in the NBA Finals an astonishing 12 times, in three different eras.

Magic Johnson laid the groundwork of the Boston-LA sports rivalry during the CBS pregame show. “Los Angeles versus Boston is as good as it gets,” Johnson said. “Incredible drama, but that was only the beginning.”

The Celtics owned the Lakers in the 1960s, with Bill Russell and Boston beating the Lakers seven times in seven tries in the NBA Finals, including six after the Lakers moved from Minneapolis to Los Angeles.

Magic and Larry Bird met three times in a four-year span in the 1980s, with the Lakers prevailing twice, with those two teams combining for eight total NBA titles in a nine-year span. Bird, along with fellow ‘80s rivals Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy and Danny Ainge were a part of an NFL Network segment on Boston vs. Los Angeles.

“The one thing about the LA fans that you’ve got to think about is most of them people are not from LA,” Bird said. “They’re not from LA then they move out there and all of a sudden they’re Lakers fans. So they’re bandwagon fans. It’s not like Boston.”

The rivalry was renewed two decades later, when Kevin Garnett led the Celtics over the Lakers in 2008, only to see Kobe Bryant and Los Angeles get revenge in 2010.

“The one thing you can expect out of the nasty, big mouth Boston fans is a bunch of ‘blah blah blah,’” Worthy said. “Shut them up.”

After the Lakers and Celtics met in the NBA Finals 11 times representing LA and Boston, baseball and football have finally decided to follow suit. Before the Patriots and Rams, we had a World Series featuring the Red Sox and Dodgers in October.

Bird and Magic were involved in that one, too, doubly so since Johnson is a part of the Dodgers ownership group.

The Red Sox won that World Series, giving Boston nine championship triumphs over Los Angeles in 12 tries. The Rams will have a tough task to turn that around on Sunday, facing a Patriots team in their ninth Super Bowl of the last 18 years, looking for New England’s sixth win.