The Lakers and Celtics are playing for the title for the second time in three years.  Many of the key pieces are the same, but both sides have two "new" starters that make this a different match-up.  Let's take a look at how things stood in 2008, and then how these new additions make things different this time around.

In 2008 the Lakers started Lamar Odom at power forward, with Pau Gasol at center.  The Gasol/Odom front line was actually a strength for the Lakers, giving them a skill and athletic advantage upfront against almost every team in the NBA.  But not against the Celtics, which played a big part in the '08 outcome.  Kevin Garnett had the ability to neutralize Odom both inside and out, and Kendrick Perkins was able to be more physical than Gasol was comfortable with.  As a result, the Celtics controlled the paint at both ends and the Lakers could not recover.

Also, the '08 Lakers had Vlad Radmanovic as their starting small forward in a swing rotation that also prominently featured Luke Walton.  Kobe Bryant spent a lot of time defending Rajon Rondo, which left Radmanovic and Derek Fisher to cover Paul Pierce and Ray Allen.  Let's just say that this didn't work out well for the Lakers.

For the Celtics, in 2008 they were hindered on offense by the fact that the Lakers had absolutely no respect for Rondo or Perkins.  As I mentioned, Kobe spent a lot of time "guarding" Rondo but sagging off of him into the paint to prevent the entry pass to Garnett.  Similarly, when Kobe wasn't in the paint Odom was coming off of Perkins to double KG.  This resulted in a less efficient Celtics offense that had to rely overly on exploiting the wing mismatches in order to score.

The previous three paragraphs go a long way to explain the way 2008 went.  And the "new" personnel changes all three of those storylines for 2010.

The Lakers have replaced Radmanovic with Ron Artest...one of the worst defensive wings just became one of the best.  Artest has already shown in these playoffs that he can lock up even a scorer as potent as Kevin Durant.  Though Fisher will still have to guard someone, with Artest and Bryant to defend two of the three perimeter Celtics it will be much more difficult for the Celtics wings to thrive offensively this time around.

The Lakers also have Andrew Bynum in uniform this time around, and even slowed by a balky knee he is still well over 7-0 tall and capable of physically filling the lane in a way that LA couldn't in '08.  In fact, the frontline of Bynum, Gasol and Odom is so ridiculously over-sized and over-skilled that they made LA just purely too big for their 2010 Western Conference foes.  It will be interesting to see whether Bynum's addition is enough for them to overwhelm the Celtics as well.

Boston has the same five starters as in '08, but the last time around Rondo and Perkins were virtua-rookies as starters and both were offensive liabilities.  And though many don't remember it, both were also injured.  Rondo had an ankle injury that slowed him, and Perkins had a shoulder injury that sidelined him completely for one game.  In the intervening two years, Rondo has made a quantum leap offensively to become one of the better guards in the NBA while Perkins has solidified himself as one of the best low-post defenders.  And both now have championship experience and are relatively healthy.  That makes them completely different than the last time around.  Perkins still won't do a lot to hurt the Lakers offensively if they double off of him, but if Kobe tries to sag off of Rondo again Rajon likely torches them.  The Cavaliers tried to defend Rondo that way, and the end result was Rondo exploding to become the talk of this postseason.  If the Lakers repeat this mistake, expect the results to be the same.

Lakers vs Celtics is one of the most storied rivalries in sports.  In 2008 it was a rivalry in tradition only.  But two years later the match-up features the last two NBA champions, and now these players have personal reasons not to like each other very much.  The series returns 8 of the 10 same starters from 2008, at least in theory, but there are enough differences that this match-up should tell an entirely new story.  I, for one, can't WAIT to see how this plays out.