Celtics' Rookie Continues to Impress

January 31, 1980

Larry Bird made sure there would be a game to win with a sensational third quarter, and the Boston Celtics went out and did exactly what they had to do in the first six minutes of the final period, sprinting ahead of the hard- working Cleveland Cavaliers and then hanging on for a 110-103 victory before 12,126 at the Garden last night.

Bird, who had suffered through a horrible first half, picked up the team and the crowd with a 13-consecutive-point, nine-rebound third quarter. That left the Celtics trailing by just two points, 80-78, to a hot-shooting Cavalier club entering the final period.

Celtic coach Bill Fitch sent out a five of Rick Robey, Bird, Cedric Maxwell, Gerald Henderson and Tiny Archibald to start the fourth quarter, and this group went to work. Bird's steal and lead pass sent Henderson (14 points) in for a game-tier, and Robey stole that in-bounds pass. When Bird dropped one in from the right corner, the Celtics were ahead, 82-80.

The lead was exchanged twice more before a combination three-point play (Henderson corner jumper and loose-ball foul underneath, the shot converted by Maxwell) launched the Celtics into a 14-2 blitz and a 96-86 lead with 6:15 left.

The home team would again lead by 10 at 100-90 (3:35), and the closest Cleveland would come thereafter was five at 100-95. But a steal and Archibald driving three-pointer restored order.

Inasmuch as they only made one field goal in the final 5:40 of the first half, the Celtics couldn't have felt too bad about trailing the Cavaliers by just one point, 55-54, at the half.

The boring 24 minutes of basketball were dominated more by officials Wally Rooney and Hugh Evans than by any of the players. Neither team could establish any continuity offensively, in part because of their own ineptitude (this was espcially true of Boston) and in part because of the weird calls by the two referees. There were 13 lead changes and four ties, but absolutely no suspense in the first half.

The biggest lead claimed by either team was seven, that being a 28-21 Boston advantage with 1:29 left in the first period. But the Celtics, who only managed 11 fast-break points in the half, almost immediately set out to give the Cavaliers a chance, being outscored, 8-2, in the remainder of the period and stretching that into a run which left the visitors leading, 40-35, four minutes into the second period.

Each club then had brief surges. Boston, for example, ran off eight straight points in one burst to assume a 45-42 lead. The Cavaliers promptly scored seven unanswered points of their own, and so it went.

Among Boston's problems in the first half was a positively atrocious stint turned in by Bird, who shot two for 11 and allowed Kenny Carr to slip in for a pair of unmolested tap-ins. The Celtics, meanwhile, were doing very little on the offensive boards. Maxwell, the Boston first-half high man with 14 points, scored all six of Boston's second-chance points, althoughk M.L. Carr created one of the baskets with a nice keep-alive of his own miss.

If any Celtic contributed much in the first half, it probably was Carr. He was the central figure in the only crowd-pleasing stretch, a little run from 17-14, Cleveland, to that 28-21 juncture. In one stretch of 12 points, Carr scored four points, had two assists - one to Chris Ford for a fast-break three-pointer - and came up with that aforementioned second shot for Maxwell.

The Cavaliers shot very well in the first period (11 for 19), and they would have done better than losing by a 30-27 one-quarter score were it not for six turnovers, which the Celtics converted into eight points. Cleveland leaned on Mike Mitchell, who led all scorers with 15, and on free throws.

Though both sides complained about the calls, and though Rooney hit Cleveland coach Stan Albeck with a technical for saying "C'mon, Wally," the refereeing evened out. It was just one of those January nights in which you had a team flying back from Chicago on the one side and a team that had gone through a four-overtime game the night before on the other. A 50-percent discount for the fans who paid to see this yawner would have been proper.