1981-82 C's Still Not Playing Championship Caliber Ball

1981-82 Boston Celtics

What is remarkable about the 1981-82 Boston Celtics is the unremarkable way in which they have accumulated the best record in the league.

There have been few distinguished home displays, at least not by the lofty standards generally applied to this particular club. Boston's superiority over most teams has been easily established in almost every home game. Consider that in both the loss to Houston and the loss to Chicago, the Celtics led by at least 15 points in the third quarter before surrendering control of the game. It would have been very, very easy for the Celtics to be undefeated at home going into today's game with Portland.

And yet there have been few total demonstrations of power, only an occasional affirmation of specific strengths. The Celtics have been winning games in the manner expected of defending champions, which is to say that they play with a confidence, bordering on arrogance, that allows them to play as well as they have to, when they have to.

There can simply be no question but that the Celtics have yet to put together a stretch of total team basketball of, shall we say, championship basketball. They've won on offense. They've won on defense, especially in the early part of the season. They have won thanks to the bench, and despite it. They have enjoyed superb individual stretches of basketball by the likes of Larry Bird, Tiny Archibald, Robert Parish and Kevin McHale. However, there has yet to be a period when the soloists have united to form a tight band. The total synchronization of front-line production at both ends, backed up by consistently useful bench performances, has yet to materialize.

Bill Fitch has said from the beginning of training camp that his big task this season would be to find a new "recipe," a new form of attack, if the team is to repeat as champions. Making his task difficult has been the decline of Chris Ford, who often is not involved in the offense and who has looked slower than ever on defense. Whereas last season it could be argued that Ford's drop in scoring production was largely attributable to a shift in emphasis from outside to inside - the better to exploit the skills of Messrs. Parish and McHale - now there is no doubt that his drooping totals are due to advancing age.

Fitch's major task in the remainder of the regular season will be to firm up the big-guard spot, juggling Ford (who is by no means finished), Gerry Henderson and M.L. Carr. The potential for second-guessing is enormous, and Fitch is not to be envied.

However, for every frustrating moment Fitch will spend agonizing over the big-guard position, he'll have 10 delightful ones thinking about a frontcourt that is the envy of basketball. No other team can rotate five players the caliber of Bird, Parish, McHale, Cedric Maxwell and Rick Robey. Indeed, no front court in the history of basketball has ever been so big, so mobile and so deep in quality.

Fitch rhapsodizes about obtaining a true "small" forward, a greyhound along the lines of Walter Davis, Jamaal Wilkes, Alex English or Mike Mitchell, but it's less of an issue than it used to be now that Maxwell has advanced far enough defensively to handle these types. The truth is that Boston is far more difficult to match up with than any other team. Do you put your big guy or your small guy on Bird? And if you put your big guy on him, you'd better be aware that the small forward who can prevent Maxwell from having his own way inside doesn't exist. And what do you do when McHale comes in, especially, because he is such a remarkable outside shooter for a man 6-foot-10?

Moreover, there can be no exaggerating the impact of Bird, who attracts more converts nightly to the premise that he is, at the very least, the best forward who has ever lived. Midway through his third professional season, this 25-year-old basketball PhD is in total command of his game. There is no better passer, at any size, no better clinical rebounder (the only ways to get an offensive rebound on him are to knock him out of the way and get away with it or jump over him), no better clutch shooter or no faster thinker. He is the only forward in history to make everyone on his team a better player.

Reason dictates that the Celtics have their best basketball ahead of them, if only because they have emulated their 1980-81 team play so infrequently. Granted, observers in any other city would be heaping praise on a 31-9 club. But this is not an ordinary team. Intense scrutiny comes with the territory; the Celtics know that.