33-8 Run Buries Pacers

1981-82 Celtics

Be it known that last night between the hours of 8 and 9 p.m., Eastern Standard Time, the Boston Celtics , a member club of the National Basketball Association, invented a new sport, henceforth to be known as shareball.

The Celtics played this new pastime for 8 minutes and forty-five seconds on the game clock, and since any new creation is best played by its creator, it was only logical that the score during the shareball contest was Boston 33, Indiana 8. The star-crossed Pacers never had a chance.

The final score in the basketball game was 111-94 in favor of the Celtics, but it was the shareball game that dominated the postgame discussions.

Shareball is like basketball, only better. As demonstrated by the quintet of Larry Bird, Cedric Maxwell, Robert Parish, Chris Ford and Tiny Archibald, shareball is a communication of mind and body wherein five talented athletes plug into a common energy source that automatically blocks out any distraction that would keep them from the common goal, which is to see that basket after basket is scored without benefit of the dribble. It does help if one of the five men involved is the premier all-around player in the game today, not that we're mentioning any names.

The score was 62-59, Boston, and the situation was somewhat precarious. From 17 points in arrears (42-25), Jack McKinney's Pacers had come back with poised, intelligent, aggressive play, until they were but one in-and-out shot from being one point behind with 23 minutes to play. One minute into the third period, the Indiana Pacers were not just in the game. Though three points down, they were in control of it.

What happened in the next 8:45 cannot be explained in any manner that would do it poetic justice. Somehow, some way, the Celtics fell into a mind set that lifted them from the realm of the ordinary. The run began innocently enough with a Chris Ford low-post turnaround, and then heated up on an Archibald-to-Bird fast break.

The next sequence was the best. Parish smacked a George Johnson drive over to Bird, who started upcourt. At precisely the right moment (without question, most players would have decided to take it all the way themselves at this crucial juncture), Bird slipped the ball back to Archibald in the middle. He, in turn, fed Maxwell, who, spying Bird running a pefect right-lane route, flipped a behind-the-back pass to his teammate. Bird stuffed the ball, and they might as well have turned the lights out right there and queued up "Born To Lose," because this baby was over, right then and there.

But the Celtics were only beginning, in terms of providing aesthetic pleasure. This, after all, was shareball, not basketball, and so the show went on, seven more fast breaks worth, untold thrills worth.

Indiana shoots . . . Indiana misses . . . Boston rebounds . . . Boston outlets . . . Ball goes from one white-shirted shareballer to another. . . Two points . . . Crowd howls . . .

It was a special combination of precision and emotion so thrilling to watch that on the bench Rick Robey and Kevin McHale were deciding they would much rather be sitting there watching than playing.

The run mounted. 13-0 in 2:28. Then 18-2. And 21-4. Finally, 33-8 on an Archibald drive begun way back by a ferocious Bird traffic rebound. By then the basketball score was 95-67, a scant nine and a half minutes after the Pacers had been three down with the ball.

First there was a game, and then, well, there just wasn't. "They were awesome," said McKinney. " They did everything right. If they made a mistake, they covered for it with second or third effort. That's not the mark of a good team; that's the mark of a great team, and they were great tonight. They could have beaten us by 30 or 40."

Indeed, the Pacers had been guilty of nothing more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were a historical accident, in other words, the team that will always be remembered as the opponent the night the Boston Celtics invented shareball.