Lakers join Yankees as teams to unsuccessfully use 2004 Red Sox for inspiration

BOSTON -- Listen: Is there a childish element to sports rivalries? Sure. Do the feelings associated with those rivalries mean more to the fans than they do the professionally hired athletes playing in the games? Yeah, fine.

Still, there should be some standards followed by sports teams when it comes to these rivalries. And the Los Angeles Lakers have violated the code.

They did so by playing clips from the 2004 Red Sox prior to Monday night's Game 4 in the Western Conference Finals. With the Lakers trailing the Denver Nuggets 3-0 in the series, the folks in charge of the Lakers' in-arena entertainment thought it would be a good idea to lean on the success of a Boston team to help rally the troops.

Bad call.

For one, it didn't work. Despite a tremendous performance from LeBron James and a 15-point lead at halftime, the Lakers were once again overwhelmed by Nikola Jokic and the Nuggets, who won 113-111 to complete the four-game sweep and advance to the NBA Finals.

Secondly -- and perhaps more importantly -- we can't be having the Los Angeles Lakers using Boston sports teams as motivation. It's an incompatible thought. If the Celtics had a comeback from a 3-0 deficit in their history, then the Lakers certainly wouldn't have used that footage as motivation on Monday night. So even though the Red Sox play a different sport, those clips of Kevin Millar, David Ortiz and Dave Roberts never should have burned bright on the video board in Los Angeles. It's just not right.

As a somewhat funny side point: Alex Rodriguez, who infamously slapped the ball out of Bronson Arroyo's glove in Game 6 of that ALCS, was in attendance on Monday night.

What's most shocking is that this isn't the only instance of a Boston rival trying to siphon some of that '04 Red Sox juju. The Yankees -- as in the New York Yankees -- tried doing that just last October. With New York trailing the Astros 3-0 in the 2022 American League Championship Series, the team's mental skills coach was sending around highlights of the '04 Red Sox to Yankees players to try to show them what is possible.

Not only did the Yankees pull that bonkers move of trying to inspire Yankees players by showing them video clips of the greatest failure in Yankees history, but they also had David Ortiz himself FaceTime with manager Aaron Boone before Game 4.

It was a ludicrous approach for the chief rival of the Boston Red Sox to take. And just like the Lakers' effort on Monday, it flopped, with the Yankees losing that Game 4, in which they blew the lead on two separate occasions.

Again, players are professionals and not necessarily as invested in the historic rivalries as the fans and the organization as a whole might be. But still, there are standards. The Cubs didn't use footage of the White Sox winning their 2005 World Series in order to try to get everyone jazzed up about the Cubs potentially breaking their own championship drought. The Dodgers didn't blast Giants World Series footage in the stadium to try to get the team over the championship hump. You'll never see a pump-up video featuring Coach K playing in Chapel Hill. The Canadiens won't be using footage of Brad Marchand hoisting the Stanley Cup to try to produce some sort of positive result in Montreal. It's just antithetical to what the teams are trying to accomplish.

And yet, the Yankees and now the Lakers don't seem to understand that.

There aren't too many rules in sports. But let's make sure this doesn't happen again.