Both Teams Guarantee a Take-No-Prisoners Game 7

1984 NBA Finals

The ugliness is everywhere.

It is in the packed-in seats and bannered rafters and tiny locker rooms of steaming Boston Garden.

It spills from the lips of the Boston Celtics and from the throats of the Los Angeles Lakers.

Yes, there will be a decisive seventh game of the NBA championship series Tuesday night at the old building on Causeway Street.

But don't look for these two teams to show each other a lot of mutual respect.

Not after a Lakers fan threw beer

in the face of the Celtics' M.L. Carr on Sunday after the Lakers' 119-108 victory over the Celtics in Game 6 at the Forum.

Not after James Worthy's firstquarter, push-from-behind foul on a fast- breaking Celtic, Cedric Maxwell.

Not after Danny Ainge's rip-yourhead-off foul on Worthy on Sunday afternoon.

Not with the memory of Kevin McHale's clothesline tackle of the Lakers' Kurt Rambis in Game 4, for which he was labeled a "thug" by Los Angeles Coach Pat Riley.

Not after the verbal confrontation between Celtics forward Larry Bird and Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the same game.

The 1984 title series, which began as a black-tie affair between the two elite basketball teams, has turned ugly. Now, not even the Geneva Convention could save this one from violence.

"This (the seventh game) will definitely be more physical than yesterday's," Bird said.

"I'm not predicting anything will happen in the Garden," Bird continued, ''but after what happened to M.L., the Lakers had better wear hard hats instead of oxygen masks.

"You never want to do that (throw beer) and then go back to the other fellows' home.

"You don't want to turn the Boston fans loose.

"If the guy had walked up to M.L. and done it face to face, it would have been different. But to do it from 20 rows up. . . . If the fans got wind of it or saw it on TV, they will do something. I hope they don't, but I think they will be ready to explode."

That definitely can be interpreted as a warning, made all the scarier
because it was not even from the guy who got hit.

The guy who got hit, Carr, was even angrier.

"Now it's all-out war," the seldomused swingman said. "We are not going to come out and be soft anymore."

Of the foul by Worthy on Maxwell, Carr said: "I know what James did he did in the sense of battle. That just shows they are going for the gold, too. But we are not going to be soft. I'd like to meet them at the airport tomorrow."

Maxwell himself showed little emotional restraint.

"He just pushed me with both hands," the Celtics' starting power forward said.

"I guess that's how you play basketball (in Los Angeles). The last game will be physical from the very beginning. And I'm sure that something will happen to them for doing that."

Not that the Celtics are the only ones ready to rumble tonight.

"We tried to play team basketball," Worthy said, "but they've been verbally abusing us the whole series, giving choke signs in front of 17,000 people. If that's the way they want to play, fine. I think we have to play like them.

"We can't let them intimidate us. They came in here the last time (in Game 4) and floored Kurt with a clothesline tackle and just kept doing it, trying to humiliate us.

"I don't like to get involved in that kind of stuff, but playing a team like the Celtics, you have to compete with them. I'd never do the things they've done, the taunting and choking signs. It's unprofessional and it's immature."

But it's for real, as real as the bruises on all their bodies.

Now all that's left is to play the game inside the Garden caldron, in front of 14,890 of the most raucus, the most vocal and the most frantic basketball fans in the NBA. * * *

Lakers reserve center Bob McAdoo is doubtful because of a strained Achilles' tendon suffered in Game 6, although he made the trip. . . . Magic Johnson is nursing a sore left knee, which is slowed by tendinitis. . . . Abdul-Jabbar has suffered six migraine headaches since the series opened. . . . This is the first seventh game in an NBA title series since 1978. . . . The Celtics are 7-0 in seventh games in title series, while the Lakers are 0-6. . . . With a win Tuesday night, the Celtics would earn their 15th title, their first since 1981. . . . The Celtics have lost only one title series, in 1958, to the St. Louis Hawks.