1984 NBA Finals: BOB MCADOO IS ANCIENT CELTIC HISTORY

Larry v. Magic: Game-by-Game Summary

Larry v. Magic: Game-by-Game Media Coverage

The trade was made late at night in February of 1979.

Legend has it that Phyllis George, the former Miss America and the wife of Celtics owner John Y. Brown, watched Bob McAdoo play in Madison Square Garden against the Celtics. She told her husband how much she liked Bob McAdoo and how good he would look in a Celtics uniform.

In the morning, three No. 1 draft choices and the rights to a player to be named later belonged to the New York Knicks. Bob McAdoo was in a Celtics uniform.

"The trade was made over dinner, wasn't it?" someone said to Celtics president Red Auerbach yesterday morning in the Fabulous Forum.

"The trade was made over whiskey," Auerbach grumbled. "Late at night."

The trade stunk.

It was initiated by whim, by caprice, by almost a Marie Antoinette view of the basketball world. There was no sense to it for the Celtics, struggling at the time. There was no sense to it for McAdoo, a player whose scoring talents were not the talents the Celtics needed. There was no sense at all.

"How long did it take for you to realize this was not going to work?" McAdoo was asked yesterday.

"About a week," he said.

"No, sooner than that," he said, changing his mind. "About a day.

"I came to Boston, read all the comments in the papers about how the team had traded away its future, about how bad the trade was. I said, What the hell is this? What am I supposed to do?' I really felt as if I were a pawn, just being moved around."

Nothing fit. None of it.

John Y. Brown had owned the team in Buffalo, where McAdoo had been an instant star, a Rookie of the Year, a Most Valuable Player. Trying to cut expenses, not wanting to pay McAdoo's heavy salary, John Y. had traded him to New York in the first place.

Now John Y. - owning another team in another town - wanted Bob McAdoo back? Crazy.

The Celtics already had a center named Dave Cowens and in this struggling season Cowens also was the coach. The Celtics needed bulk, muscle, someone to work the backboards. What they added was a lithe, smooth, almost effete 6- foot-9 jump shooter.

Nothing fit.

"Bob came to us, and he was that big piece in the puzzle that didn't fit," Celtics forward Cedric Maxwell said. "He was that piece left over at the end, the one you hold in your hand and say, Now where is this supposed to go?' "

There were some other situations, spinning on the side, that also were not great for Bob McAdoo at the time. His marriage was falling apart. His father was sick, dying, in North Carolina. There was an uncomfortable buzz in his personal life and now there was this uncomfortable buzz in his professional life.

He had been checked into a situation that seemed beyond his control."He was a great player who went bad," Red Auerbach said. "Very bad."

"What's bad?" someone asked.

"The first day he was mad because he wasn't starting," Auerbach said. "He didn't know the plays or anything, and he was mad because he wasn't starting. Then, at the end of the year, remember, he didn't play the final nine games because he wanted to protect his scoring average. Said he had a cold or something. "If that isn't going bad, then what is?"

"We'd won five straight games before he came to us and then we he got here, we started losing," said Maxwell, who became McAdoo's roommate and friend in Boston. "Everything just fell on him.

"People underestimate him because of the way he looks, never showing emotion. He's a lot like Robert Parish that way. He's competitive, as competitive as anyone I've ever known, in anything he does, but it just doesn't show. People don't like that. They want to see the rah-rah."

He was a Celtic for only the final three months of that '79 season. As soon as John Y. and Phyllis had departed for the governor's manse in Kentucky - "Ooooh, John! Let's try politics now!" - Auerbach shuffled McAdoo to Detroit for two No. 1 draft picks and the rights to M.L. Carr. The McAdoo- Celtics story was over.

Until now.

"I'm going out to dinner with him tonight," Cedric Maxwell said. "We were supposed to go out after the game on Sunday, but I backed out after the way the Lakers beat us the way they did. It would be like going out to dinner with someone who robbed your house, took all your silverware and your money.

"Tonight we'll go out and talk. We did the same thing in Boston. He was at my house until 2 in the morning. Just talking about the games."

Bob McAdoo, of course, is now a Laker. He is part of the full-court buzz- saw that is cutting through the Celtics. LA is ahead, 2-1, in these NBA finals, looking as if it will rip the Celtics apart again in Game 4 tomorrow night at the Forum. The loose ends of McAdoo's life have been tied in tidy square knots. He is averaging 28 minutes, 14 points and 7 rebounds a game.

Thirty-two-year-old Bob McAdoo is enjoying himself.

"I'm coming off the bench," he said. "I'm just one of the factors in the game. If we win, everything is spread around. If things go bad, same thing. The heat's not all on me. I've had my glory in Buffalo and in New York. I don't have to play 40 minutes and score 30 points and have 15 rebounds. I just want to win."

He has been with the Lakers for three years, and this is his third NBA finals series. The knocks about attitude and style slowly have disappeared. ("He's playing good basketball," Red Auerbach said.) There is a tranquility about his situation. An enjoyment.

"What's the worst memory you have of Boston?" he was asked. "Dave Cowens wanted to send me into a game when there were two minutes left," he said. "I was the third-leading scorer in the league, and I hadn't played the entire game, and he wanted me to go in with two minutes left."

"What'd you do?"

"I didn't go," Bob McAdoo said with a little smile on his face.

All of that seemed like ancient history now. Ancient, ancient history.