5.05.2019

For Cornbread, Light at End of the Tunnel

For Cornbread, Finally Light at End of the Tunnel

March 29, 1980

FOR MAXWELL, IT WAS ALL RAGS TO RICHES' HE CAME TO BOSTON STRAIGHT FROM THE FINAL FOUR OF THE NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS IN ATLANTA, WHERE THE CHEERING NEVER STOPPED.

And when he got here, they threw him into the rubber room of the Boston Celtics of Irv Levin and John Y. Brown. For two seasons, Cedric Maxwell flopped and floundered amid the chaos that had turned the Celtic tradition inside out. He played well, but if there was a light at the end of the tunnel, it seemed so far away that he'd be 50 before he reached
it.



When each miserable season was over, he'd pack his bags and head back to North Carolina. He wouldn't watch the NBA playoffs on television. If there was one solitary thing in the universe he wanted to get away from, it was the game of basketball. And so it was understandable that Maxwell was the most emotional player on the court last night as the Celtics clinched first place in the Atlantic Division with a dramatic win over the Cleveland Cavaliers, a team that did not roll over and die in a game that meant nothing to them.

With a little over two minutes left, Maxwell converted a rebound off a Tiny Archibald steal to hoist the lead to 124-110, and as the crowd went into the old "We're No. 1" cliche, Maxwell grinned and raised a bony forefinger to the sky. A little later, with the game pretty much stashed away, Pete Maravich hit a couple of free throws, and as he came away from the line, Maxwell grabbed him around the waist and hugged him.

A couple of others on this team - Dave Cowens and Don Chaney - had gone through the bad times, but they'd also been with the Celtics when the sun always shone. The others, with the exception of Jeff Judkins, who had suffered through last season, had come over from other teams or (Larry Bird and Gerald Henderson) were rookies. "I got more excited because for me it was rags to riches," Maxwell said. "The emotion was really waitin' to come out." When the season began, Maxwell didn't know what to expect. Here was the big-news rookie, the big-bucks kid coming in from

Indiana. And here was M.L. Carr coming over from Detroit. Dave Cowens, he'd heard, was in great shape, and they'd told him Tiny Archibald was playing like a kid again. But who knew? Who knew how everybody would react to one another? Who knew about Bill Fitch, the new coach, the one from Cleveland who always seemed to have a clever remark after a game? And who knew about Cedric Maxwell? All winter, the rumors flew that he'd be the one to go and Bob McAdoo would be the one to stay.

He'd read stories that all he wanted to do was be a big scorer and that he didn't care about team play. The stories, trade rumors and the other stuff bothered him. So he didn't know what to expect when he reported to Hellenic College for the start of this training season. What he found was truly amazing. He found Larry Bird, the big-bucks rookie, a joy to play with. What he'd heard about Carr and Cowens and Archibald were true.

The coach? The coach reminded him a lot of Lee Rose, who was his coach at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. "Bill Fitch is demanding," he now says. "He'd push you till you got mad. Oh, yeah, you'd get mad; then he'd back off. But you can't argue with the way he coaches because it works. What we've accomplished is proof it works." And there was this other little item, something very important for a kid from North Carolina who had always considered basketball an enjoyable game and who had been jolted by his first two years as a Celtic.

There was no locker-room animosity, no backbiting, no jealousy, no finger- pointing. There were just some very talented individuals, who, as Fitch said last night, never put that talent ahead of the team concept. And so Cedric Maxwell and the rest of this team, so out of synch with the Me Generation, have reached the first plateau of the hike to the top of the NBA mountain. "The way I feel tonight," said Fitch, "I'd like to fly over there and get the hostages back. I can't remember a game when this team didn't play hard. Sometimes they played awful, but they always played awful hard." There are miles to go before the Celtics sleep, of course, and the woods are dark and deep and filled with Spurs, Rockets,
Lakers, Sonics and whatever.

Not many of the Celtics have been in the NBA playoffs. "Every game will be like the last couple we've had," said Cowens. "You'll see the same team five, six times in a row. That is different." Before all that, however, there is time to savor what has already happened. "The playoffs will be a surprise," said Cedric Maxwell, who has never played in one. They can't be any more of a surprise than the 1979-80 Celtic season, a season nobody could have imagined, a season that brought back a tradition that seemed forever lost.

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