9.29.2019

Memorial Day Massacre: Part 3

May 28, 1985

Memorial Day Massacre: Part 3

There was no indication that this was going to happen. No indication at all. The Boston Celtics arrived for work yesterday afternoon and began dropping things in the locker room.

"Who was dropping things?" Celtics forward Cedric Maxwell was asked.



"Everyone was dropping things," Maxwell replied. "I dropped something. Kevin McHale dropped something. Quinn Buckner stepped on my stereo speakers."

"What speakers?" Quinn Buckner asked.

"See?" Cedric Maxwell said. "Everyone was dropping things, bumping into things."

No indication at all. The faces were the same and the people were the same and this was supposed to be The Game of Games to start The Series to Top All Series. Wasn't it? This was supposed to be the challenge of challenges, the test of tests, the grand walk down the darkest alley with the biggest dragon available. Wasn't it?

The cloud of invincibility arrived as a surprise.

"Did you ever think your team would play a game like . . . this?" the Celtics' star, Larry Bird, was asked after they had pounded the Los Angeles Lakers, 148-114, to open this best-of-seven NBA final series.

"No," he replied softly. "I never dreamed it would be like this."

Something happened on a short walk through a yellow corridor from the Celtics' locker room to the heat and passion that surrounded the funny-looking floor. Something strange. Jack Nicholson, the actor, stood in the corridor and smiled and the Celtics smiled back as they passed and the organ played and something happened.

They became, well, is "touched" too strong a word? They could do anything positive. They could do nothing negative. Their individual basketball games for this one afernoon became distilled products, all good retained, all impurities removed.

Explanations can be written in X's and O's and squiggly lines about what happened on the Garden floor, but the way the Celtics played was more than that. They were working a four-leaf clover day. They were good, they were lucky, they flat-out were anything they wanted to be.

All shots went through the basket. Hard shots. Easy shots. Didn't matter. The statistics sheet says that 40 of 102 shots missed, but try to find a film that shows any one of them. No shots missed. Not one of them.

"Incredible," was the word Laker guard Magic Johnson used to describe what he saw in front of his face. "Just incredible."

Three pointers flew through the air as if they were layups. Scott Wedman or Danny Ainge would cock to fire and 14,890 hands automatically would move to record the points. Baskets were made on spins and stuffs, banking fallaways and clanking hook shots. Passes went through areas where there was no room. Everyone was reading the same page and the entire page was filled with exclamation points.

"Was there a point when you just said to yourself, 'These guys can do anything today' ?" Lakers coach Pat Riley was asked.

"Yeah, there was one," the coach said. "There was one . . . six . . . a dozen."

The Celtics looked as if they were a bunch of precocious children performing for a nationwide audience of adults. They could answer any question, perform any trick, use any bit of household knowledge.

"How about a three-minute egg?" Lakers center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar would ask. "Can you make a perfect hard-boiled egg?"

"Here it is," Robert Parish would reply underneath the basket. "Best egg you've ever seen."

"Do you know the capitol of Ecuador?" guard Byron Scott would ask in a third-quarter collision with Ainge.

"Quito," Ainge would reply. "And don't you forget it."

"Yeah, but can you paint?" Lakers forward James Worthy would ask Larry Bird.

"Wait a minute," Bird would say, whipping out a canvas and oils and handing over the finished product at the end of a timeout. "I call it Mona . . . what's a good second name? Mona Something. I'll have the title for you by the end of game. After I hit a few more of these underhand layups."

The Lakers simply were spun out, dizzy from all of this. What could they do? What could they say? What could they ask? Seventeenth President of the United States? Author of "Moby Dick"? Winner of the 1984 US Open?

"Andrew Johnson," Carlos Clark said, off the bench to score a runner.

"Herman Melville," Greg Kite shouted, thumping home hookers for seven points.

"Fuzzy Zoeller!" M.L. Carr screamed, hitting a three-pointer down the stretch. "Frank Urban (Fuzzy) Zoeller!"

Everyone who wore a green shirt was part of the same happy sing-a-long. Everyone. Starters. Bench. Everyone. Coach K.C. Jones and assistants Jimmy Rodgers and Chris Ford could have hurried to a recording studio and knocked off a hit record. Easy as that. Everyone.

Everyone in Laker purple seemed tired, confused. Jabbar, the scoring center for all time, seemed held back by strings of age. Tired. Old. Magic seemed solved, the Laker fast break shut down by all those basketballs going through a hoop. Worthy? Bob McAdoo? Kurt Rambis? The entire Laker operation seemed mystified by this buzz that had arrived.

"Bobby Fischer, the chess champion, always said that on a day like this you can see defeat in your opponent's eye," a reporter said to Cedric Maxwell. "Was that the way it was today?"

"Yes," the Celtics forward agreed.

"What did it look like?"

"Like someone slapping you in the face," Cedric Maxwell said. "Shock. You know how it is when you're slapped? Shock."

The crazy part is that the shock went everywhere. The Lakers were shocked. The Celtics were shocked. The fans in the building and stretched across the country were shocked. Perfection anywhere is a surprise.

No one expected . . . this.

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