“I think we just understood each other as Earvin and Larry,” Johnson told Oram. “We didn’t get to do that before that commercial. You know, when you come into a built-in rivalry, the expectations were there for both of us. His was different from mine. I didn’t have to save a franchise. I just had to uplift, right? Take it to another level. They (the Lakers) were already making the playoffs without me; we just had to go to that next level. He had heavy lifting … they put everything on him. “So I would say that because both franchises hated each other so much that we could never be friends. You know, we bought into what was already going on between the franchises. But that commercial changed everything. It finally gave us a chance to sit down and break bread and laugh. Before that, man, we would just nod at each other and say, “Hi.” We didn’t shake hands on the court; it was like, I hated him and the Celtics, and he hated me and the Lakers.