Eastern Conference Semifinals
1981-82 Boston Celtics
Playoff games were meant to be like this. When the best basketball players in the world congregate each spring, the idea is to have gigantic people spill their guts onto the floor, performing feats of derring- do and heroism under the dual pressures of crowd noise and a ticking clock. All too often, what we get are glorified wrestling matches.
But not yesterday afternoon. What a Capital Centre crowd of 16,295 saw was a splendid marriage of power and passion, a game that was allowed to simmer gradually until it finally exploded into a memorable playoff encounter because two experienced officials, Earl Strom (who on his good days, like this one, may well be the best referee who ever lived) and John Vanak, had it firmly in their fraternal grasp from the opening jump ball.
And when it was over, the Celtics had carved out a tense 103-99 overtime triumph that not only sends them back home leading the Bullets by a 3-1 margin in this best-of-seven NBA Eastern Conference semifinal, but which also served the purpose of reminding the game opponents that teams don't win 63 regular- season games without good reason.
"We're playing a tough team," philosophized Washington's Greg Ballard, "and if we get the breaks, we win. They got 'em, so they won. But it's happened to us a number of times this season, when we've played them, and when it's happened that often, they must be making the breaks."
The Celtics were veritable Houdinis in this one. Down, 60-50, midway through the third quarter, they watched the Bullets miss three layups (two by Don Collins and one by Ballard) in less than a minute before Robert (The Magnificent) Parish swished a turnaround jumper to start the Celtics on what would be a 25-15 run that produced a tie at 75-all.
Down, 89-85, and in the midst of a field goal drought that would stretch to 5:47, they scratched their way into the overtime situation by sinking six free throws while the Bullets were doing such things as getting a five-second in-bounds violation (89-89, 1:35 remaining); losing a key possession when Ballard, having just rebounded a Ricky Mahorn free throw miss at 91-89, stumbled and fell with 38 seconds left, losing the ball; and failing to win in regulation when Spencer Haywood took a poor-percentage runner with three seconds to go.
Once in the overtime, the Bullets were done in by the spectacular all- around play of Kevin McHale as well as their own faulty offense. After a Mahorn jumper gave the Bullets a 97-95 lead with 2:06 left, the next three Washington possessions were horror shows, consisting of two turnovers and a 20-foot brick by Mahorn, not the man who should have had the ball in that situation.
The Celtics, playing without the fouled-out Parish (28 points, 15 rebounds, 3 blocks and oodles of clutch hoops), and with an offensively impotent Bird (4 for 16), were being kept afloat by McHale (six OT points and a block of a Kevin Grevey three-point try at 100-97) and Cedric Maxwell, the latter rebounding in phenomenal fashion. This game, in other words, was clearly another triumph for Redwood Power.
The Bullets had Boston in serious trouble for 2 1/2 periods, leading at the quarter (26-24), half (49-44) and three-quarter (73-69) checkpoints. But things had turned around by the end of the third, and it had all begun when the Bullets, hammer in hand, three times missed pounding home the nail at 60-50. First it was Collins clanking up an unmolested 4-footer. Then Collins missed a fast-break off-balance reverse flip. Finally, Ballard, sailing in from the left, laid the ball up too hard, perhaps because McHale was in avid pursuit.
Given these reprieves, the Celtics proceeded to start playing serious basketball, and they were forced to do it with Bird languishing on the bench with four fouls. "It was a matter of looking at each other and saying, Well, let's get going,' " McHale recalled. "This was basically the team that won the 18 (in a row) and that swept Texas. We came out and just got the ball to the Big Fella (Parish) and let him do his thing. In the last two games, he has just carried us. You can't overemphasize the importance of the baskets Robert Parish has been scoring."
Parish went to work, all right, depositing four more of those moon-shot jumpers to go with the other jumper and the rolling hook he had already scored in the period. Those 12 third-period points were nothing more than athletic plasma to a basketball accident victim.
Up to that infamous 60-50 juncture, this had been a modest playoff affair. Now it became an Event, because the Celtics were starting to show their bloodlines against a scrappy foe. The tie at 75-all was the first of seven fourth-period deadlocks. Boston led for all of 15 seconds at 85-83 after Parish buried a corner turnaround, but Washington responded with a Ballard jumper, a pretty Haywood one-on-one corner swisher and a get-the-hell-out-of- my-way third-effort follow-up by Mahorn that made it 89-85 with 2:09 left.
The absolute low moment for the Celtics came with 39 seconds left (Washington leading, 90-89) when McHale missed, and missed badly, on two free throws and Parish fouled out in the rebound action. That's when Ballard fell down and lost the ball after hauling in a Mahorn miss. Fourteen seconds later, Maxwell was fouled, and he sank the two clutch shots that created the OT.
Said OT essentially belonged to McHale, whose three hoops included a short jump hook (93-93), a lefty tap-in (95-95) and a post-up jumper (97-97). A Maxwell free throw at 1:15 put the Celtics ahead at 98-97, and two Tiny Archibald foul shots with 18 seconds left (coming after Maxwell had rebounded a Mahorn miss) gave Boston the needed three-point cushion at 100-97.
How tough was this for the Celtics? The final margin was the biggest margin. After 53 minutes of play, that's tough enough.
No comments:
Post a Comment