 Well, I thank you, and by the way, I'd like to let you in on a little secret. I wanted to welcome all of you in the Oval Office, and then I found out the ceiling is too low. From the Boston Garden to the Rose Garden, it's been quite a year for the Celtics, the team Boston loves, and all the world admires. Over the regular season, you all lived up to your awesome reputation by compiling a 62-20 record. The best in the NBA, and then came victory in the playoffs. Finally, the ultimate test, the championship series against the superb Los Angeles Lakers. They weren't just as superb as they should have been. But the battle for the title turned into a spectacular stretching over three weekends. Both teams were great, with stars on each side rising to peak performances that dazzled and thrilled the country. And last night, the whole season came down to one game. Six times before, the Boston Celtics had played in a championship series that went to seven games. Six times before, the Celtics won. And we watched holding our breath, wondering if you'd beat the odds again, do it again. You threw yourselves into that final battle with all the pride and determination and heart that have made you a legend in basketball history in time and again. You came down with key rebounds, shutting off the Lakers' fast break. You can't run without the balls, said Magic Johnson. And the Celtics seemed to rebound at every time. On the defensive boards, you were a cascade shooting again and again and scoring. Cedric Maxwell 24 points, Dennis Johnson 22 and Larry Bird 20. And the final score, 111 to 102, the Celtics had done it again. So many people ask, how do the Celtics do it? How do you keep coming back? How during that crucial moment of the seventh game of a championship series do you always manage to reach within to find that spark that's needed for victory? Well, Cedric Maxwell put it quite simply. Last night, how could anyone have thought we'd lose? We are the Celtics, you know. Well, you are the Celtics. And like the original Celtics, the great Irish warriors in olden times, you have fought four-and-one great victories in great glory. They have won this team 15 championships, eight of them since 1959. If I have my information correct, all eight of those were with the Los Angeles Lakers since 1959. Well, yours is a tradition of hard work, of teamwork, of dedication, a tradition of Celtics pride, but aren't you afraid you might be getting in a rut? We've seen that winning tradition carried forth again and again down through the years by some of the greatest heroes in basketball history. Cozy, Sharman, Ramsey, Russell, Sam and Casey Jones, Heinz Schoen, Havisleck, Covens and White. I may have mispronounced some of those names in there, I hope not. Casey Jones was not only a great player this year, he proved he's an equally great coach. He's one of only a few who have won a championship as both a player and a coach. As the leaders of your organization changed as one group of stars was replaced by another group, the Celtics not only survived, they maintained their championship form. Because always, the Celtics have been a team of champions, larger and greater than any one player, coach or manager. And in celebrating your championship, we see how America can be a nation of champions as well. Red our back, Coach Jones, members of this proud team, high in the rafters of Boston Garden, hang 14 green and white banners proclaiming the Celtics, the national champions of 14 seasons past, and sometime this summer, a 15th banner is going to be hoisted into place, as I said. That banner will belong to you and it will remind all who see it, the way each of you have lived up to the tradition of the Bostick Celtics. So I thank you and congratulations and God bless all of you. Mr. President, as NBA Commissioner, it's my pleasure to present to you the 1984 NBA World Champions, the Boston Celtics, and in particular their President and General Manager, Red our back. Mr. President, we all have our great moments, our proud moments. I've had them in the past with championship teams, but this team here really showed me something. So on behalf of Don Gaston, Alan Cohn, Paul DuPis, the owners, the Celtic staff, the players here, we're really, really proud, not only to win the championship, but proud that the President of the United States sees fit to recognize us. So we know this is your color. We know that. And we want you to have that so you'll always be a part of us. Well, thank you very much. I'm very proud of you. Now, I'd like to introduce a guy, in my opinion, has done such a fantastic job. Really has. Casey Jones, our coach. Mr. President, I thank you very kindly for those very nice words you said about me. And I must say you exercise extremely good judgment. We are very happy that we won the championship, and I did it all myself with a little help from Larry Byrd. However, we did come through it, but I like the way that these guys performed, and from their performance for a first year coach was fantastic. So I'm going to let Dennis present the ball to Mr. President. Before I present this ball, I'd like to ask the President, how do you stand out here and don't sweat? And upon that, this is from the team and the owners and everybody else involved with the Boston Celtics, and we'd like to present this ball to you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. I'm going to tell you something. If I was as smart as I was supposed to be in this job, I would have come out here and stood on a box. Well, I'm going to say, congratulations to all of you. I'm going to start way down that end of the line and go right across here. Holy cow! I was standing right back over there, and I'm dying. Hey, he's cool, though. He's cool, man. He's cool. President is cool, man. That's right here. Look at the air condition. There you are. Got no rotation. You got no rotation. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you for your graciousness. I appreciate it. Yeah, we'll tell you. I'll tell you, the only reason I'm not here is because by this time of the day, they've sweat me out in there. Thank you very much. Yeah, gone. I mean, sweat and do a sticker. All right, I like that. No, no. Thank you. Thank you very much.