Ready for some melodrama? Try this scenario.
The Mavericks had flown all night from Sacramento in order to play a team that was sitting comfortably in the hotel across the street. An All-Star player (Mark Aguirre) was sent home before the game with an intestinal virus. The team they were playing was not only the current No. 1 team in the league, but it also happened to be the one team Dallas had yet to defeat in its six- year history.
With 5:35 left, the Celtics were ahead by 13 (104-91) and Larry Bird was in the process of putting on a show the Reunion Arena crowd would never forget.
And then -- well, a lot of strange and wonderful things happened, the most strange and wonderful being a three-point shot by Dale Ellis with 16 seconds remaining that capped a memorable Dallas comeback and enabled the Mavericks to fly off the floor in possession of a 116-115 victory over the Celtics despite Bird's 50 points.
The Mavericks outscored Boston, 25-11, in those final 5 1/2 minutes. It was a classic mixture of good team defense, great offensive play and, of course, the requisite weird officiating that, by definition, must accompany a comeback of this magnitude.
For as poorly as the Celtics played at both ends of the floor during that horrifying stretch, they still might have pulled out victory had referee Hue Hollins not made a crucial call against Robert Parish with 43 seconds remaining. At that point Boston was still leading, 110-109, when Brad Davis angled in from the left of the lane. Parish switched off and, as Johnny Most would say, The Chief made him eat it. Hollins, who had spent the entire evening making calls from 25 to 40 feet away from the action, instead called a foul on Parish, his sixth, in fact.
"I thought it was a very clean block," opined Parish. But Hollins didn't, and when Davis made both foul shots, Boston was again behind by a point. The next possession was now vital, and it was a bad one. Bill Walton rolled in for a left-handed hook, but his shot was too strong. Now Dallas was up one with the ball, and Ellis was ready to strike. He found himself open straightaway, and he drilled a monster shot, a three-pointer that gave the Mavericks a 114-110 lead.
But Bird, who had already scored 45, and who doesn't die easily, took the ball and flipped in a three-point leaner (on which he appeared to be fouled). That made it 114-113 with 11 seconds to go.
Kevin McHale had to foul Rolando Blackman (32), and the Mavs' All-Star guard sank both shots to restore the three-point edge. Rather than throw up some kind of three-point response, Bird instead drove baseline and made a lefty contortion to create the final score.
The capacity crowd of 17,007 thus went home with the dual thrill of seeing the game's greatest player display his full athletic genius without being rude enough to spoil the party. Bird scored 31 second-half points as the Celtics moved from a 55-54 halftime advantage to a lead that would peak at 104-91. At this juncture Bird was the show, for the last two Celtics' baskets had been ultra swishes by Bird, the first a three-pointer and the second a long corner jumper.
So what happened?
"With the 13-point lead I should have taken control of the game and held things up," Bird confessed. "Dennis Johnson and I should have taken over. But I took a bad shot and made a bad pass and he threw a bad pass, and then they started going to the line every time down the floor."
Indeed, the first six points of the Dallas comeback were from the foul line, but that had little bearing on Boston's inability to respond at the other end. And then there was the matter of Danny Ainge's inexcusable failure to honor Davis as a three-point threat. Second only to the Ellis shot, an unguarded Davis three-pointer that made it 108-105 with 1:52 remaining did Boston in.
Between missing shots (Bird, Walton), fouling people (Johnson), not guarding people (Ainge) and being unlucky (Parish), every Celtic shared blame for the giveaway.
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