Three of my best friends since high school are huge Los Angeles Lakers fans.

That made things somewhat difficult for me, being a Boston Celtics fan, in 1985 and 1987.

Maybe I shouldn’t have gloated so much in 1984.

I haven’t been emotionally invested in the NBA since the end of the Bird-Magic wars, so I didn’t even think of rubbing it in when Boston beat L.A. in 2008. And apparently it didn’t occur to my buddies to do so in 2010, when the roles were reversed again.

This year, a little bit of Jeff Cabanlit, Paul Ching and Mike Hildenbrand died when the Lakers went down to the Thunder in the Western Conference semifinals. I don’t like to see my amigos unhappy, so I told them to cheer up because the Celtics would meet a similar fate soon (and I pretended to care).

I’m wrong about that so far. They’ve hung in longer than I thought they would or could.

Regardless of the outcome in Game 7 of the Eastern finals against the Heat, circumstances have created the strangest situation.

My shamrock-detesting, Dennis-Johnson-freckles-loathing Laker Girl-fanboy pals are now crazy about the Celtics. Well, maybe not crazy … but considering what their feelings were before, they’ve done at least half of an about-face.

They want Boston to win.

For them, it’s not really about liking the Celtics as much as it is not liking who they’re playing.

"I hate the Heat more than the C’s. The Heat are posers. The C’s at least man up," said Paul, who was the dirty-work Kurt Rambis of our pickup gang in the 1980s.

THERE’S A VIBE out there now that the Celtics are the loveable underdogs. The blue-collar guys who try harder. This was reinforced with Game 5, when the Heat were lifeless and listless, barely bothering to get back on defense, and Boston was clutch at the end.

The talk was of gritty, gutty Kevin Garnett and the Celtics as America’s Team.

Really? Even as a Celtics fan, I’ve always known them to be kind of like the Dallas Cowboys — a team with a strong, loyal fan base, but also a team that many fans nationwide had grown to dislike more than others, because of consistent winning and a certain perceived haughtiness.

Not now, though.

If anything, the drubbing the Celtics took from the Heat on Thursday in Game 6 has entrenched the teams in their protagonist and antagonist roles. While the Heat deserve credit for playing a great game on the road with their backs to the wall, there will probably be more talk today about how the Celtics perform better when they’re in that position, about their veteran savvy, about how this might be the last game their core group plays together if they lose.

I’d like to see Boston win this Game 7, for old-times sake.

But there’s a part of me that wants LeBron James to break through. It would be worth James winning it on a last-second shot just to blow the minds of all the armchair psychologists.

Either way, my Showtime-bedazzled friends will go back to hating the Celtics. As it is meant to be.