When the Game Was Ours

by Larry Bird

  Bird consulted with D.J., who believed Bird should rely on his backdoor cuts a little more. He also suggested using quicker pick-and-rolls to keep Cooper off balance.

  "But the key," D.J. told Bird, "is to get him in the post. He can't do anything once you've posted him up."

  Magic's ability to see over the defense and connect with Abdul-Jabbar for easy baskets made him the focus of Boston's defensive schemes. His superior rebounding skills were also a major concern. Few point guards crashed the glass with his gusto. It enabled Magic to start the break himself, and his teammates soon learned to release as soon as Johnson moved toward the ball off an opponent's miss. Magic also posed unique problems because he was so physical and had learned to use his body to his advantage when muscling out smaller guards.

  Because the Celtics had won 62 games during the regular season, the 1984 Finals would begin on their home floor, the hallowed parquet notorious for its dead spots. As the Lakers departed for Boston, Magic made a point of approaching Jerry West, who refused to travel to the Garden and would watch the games at home. He grabbed his boss's arm and told him, "Don't worry. We're going to make this right. We're the better team. I'm sure of it."

  When the Lakers landed at Logan Airport on May 26, they waited nearly an hour for their bags, emblazoned with the purple-and-gold Lakers emblem. When the luggage finally appeared on the conveyer belt, many of them were unzipped. Nothing was missing, according to Magic, "but the message was clear. It was just Boston's way of letting us know we shouldn't get comfortable here."

  The airport was crawling with Celtics fans who had braved the city's choked traffic on the Central Artery for the singular purpose of harassing Boston's next opponent. As Johnson scooped up his bag, a teenager displaying a shamrock logo on his kelly-green T-shirt waved enthusiastically to him. Magic slowed, expecting to fulfill an autograph request. "Hey, Magic, Larry is going to make you disappear!" he taunted.

  Johnson advanced a few more steps before another pocket of "green people" (the generic name bestowed on the passionate group of fans who stalked the Celtics) surrounded him. "Larry's going to eat you up, Magic," a woman outfitted from hat to sneakers in Celtics memorabilia announced. Johnson smiled politely and picked up his pace. He was relieved to finally reach the team bus—until he noticed the driver was wearing a Celtics shirt. When he stepped up to the counter at the team hotel to check in, the manager who assisted him also proudly wore Celtics colors.

  "Even the curtains in my room were green," Magic said.

  The city was thirsty for a championship—specifically one over Magic and the Lakers. In the moments before Game 1 began, Bird took a moment to glance into the stands and was heartened to see fans walking through the aisles dressed in white sheets to signify the ghosts of Lakers past.

  "It didn't have any bearing on the game," Bird said, "but I loved it when they pulled out those sheets."

  Magic noticed the "ghosts" too and briefly harkened back to the heartache West had endured in his prime. "That won't be me," Johnson told himself. "We're taking these guys down."

  The last Lakers player to take the floor for Game 1 was the 37-year-old Abdul-Jabbar, who had woken up that morning with a searing migraine, an affliction that plagued him throughout his career. Although the pain was crippling and usually induced acute nausea and vomiting, Kareem demonstrated an odd tendency to excel when he was suffering.

  Game 1 was no exception. Abdul-Jabbar was brilliant (32 points, 8 rebounds, 5 assists, 2 blocks) in a stunning 115–109 Lakers win, his patent skyhook clearly flummoxing Boston center Robert Parish, who looked unprepared and overmatched. Bird finished with 24 points and 14 rebounds, but the resolute Cooper had clearly affected his shooting (7 of 17 from the floor). And although Abdul-Jabbar had rightfully stolen the headlines, it was Magic who left him concerned.

  "Magic picked us apart that night," Bird said. "He got his guys easy baskets. I didn't like what I saw."

  K. C. Jones chose to start the 6-foot-2 Gerald Henderson on the 6-foot-9 Magic because he felt Henderson would be able to utilize his speed to keep up with Johnson when he filled the lane in transition. It was a decision that deeply wounded D.J., who had been gearing up all week for a matchup with Johnson.

  "I wanted a chance at him," D.J. said, "but I told myself, 'Be patient.' The last thing I needed was to be called a troublemaker again."

  Magic was equally surprised and pleased to learn Henderson was guarding him. D.J.'s physical style often made it problematic for Magic to establish tempo because he was so preoccupied with the possibility that D.J. would swat the ball free. With the smaller Henderson on him, Johnson felt he'd have better success finding Abdul-Jabbar in the post and would be able to generate more offensive opportunities for himself.

  He was correct on both counts. Magic scored 14 points by the end of the first quarter in Game 2, and his confidence was soaring. He was on the verge of leading the Lakers to victory when a seemingly minor miscue in the final seconds led to a series of gaffes that haunted him for the remainder of the series.

  The Lakers held a 113–111 lead with 20 seconds to play when McHale, a 78 percent free throw shooter, was fouled and stepped up to the line. The young forward, his knees wobbling, missed them both.

  Magic snared the rebound on the second miss and had victory in his hands. All he had to do was turn, take the ball up the floor, and run out the clock to preserve a 2–0 series lead for the Lakers. Instead, he inexplicably called time-out, enabling Boston to set its defense against the ensuing inbounds play.

  Pat Riley had instructed Johnson to call time-out if McHale made both free throws to tie the game. He had not given the same instructions in the event McHale missed.

  "I'm to blame," Riley said. "It was the biggest mistake of my career. I was so busy on the sidelines talking to my players and preparing for the final seconds, I never even looked up to see if McHale made the free throws.

  "I just assumed he did. Earvin did what he was told. It was my fault. I should have been more conscious of what was unfolding. My best player had rebounded the ball, and all he had to do was run up the floor and the game would have been over."

  Instead, Boston's defenders utilized the time-out to face-guard each Laker on the floor. Magic had to find someone who was open—quickly. He chose his whippet forward, Worthy, who had already scored 29 points in the game on 11-of-12 shooting. But Worthy floated a sloppy crosscourt pass to Byron Scott, and Henderson intercepted it. He streaked in for a lay-up to tie the game—and permanently cement himself in Boston's sports annals as a true Celtics postseason hero.

  Worthy instantly identified who was about to be labeled the goat. He had played for North Carolina in the 1982 NCAA Final against Georgetown. In the final seconds of that epic game, Georgetown guard Fred Brown threw a pass right into Worthy's hands and cost his Hoyas the championship.

  "It wasn't until that day in Boston Garden that I truly understood how Fred felt," Worthy said. "It's the most humiliating feeling in the world."

  The Garden crowd, despondent just moments earlier, was now on its feet. Their ardent cheers of "Let's go, Celtics!" drowned out most of what Riley attempted to tell his players in the huddle, which was that LA still had a chance to pull out the win. They had the ball, their redoubtable center, their charismatic point guard, and 13 seconds to regain the momentum.

  But Magic's swagger had dissipated. There was too much noise, too much pressure, too many scenarios to consider. He carefully dribbled the ball up the floor, searching for the open man, but Worthy was covered. He looked to Kareem, but Parish was denying Ka-reem the ball. With three seconds left in the game, Magic realized with horror that he was almost out of time. He quickly fired the ball to Bob McAdoo, but McHale, his long, gangly arms outstretched, prevented McAdoo from getting a shot off.

  "Magic had a brain freeze," Carr said. "It happens. The place is loud. Everyone is yelling to you, and at you. And Magic was only a kid. He was still learning."

  The Boston crowd was incre
dulous. Thirteen seconds to go and Magic couldn't deliver a shot for his team? The jeering began in earnest. The mistake was further magnified when a Scott Wedman baseline jumper sealed the win for the Celtics in overtime and knotted the series 1–1.

  As the Lakers collected their warm-ups, Worthy patted his young point guard on the back. There would be two Laker goats on this night, not just one.

  "I'll never forget the look on Magic's face," Buckner said. "It was one of absolute disbelief. He had never messed up before."

  "When a player of that caliber does something so uncharacteristic, you know you are lucky," Ainge said. "You also anticipate that star will make up for it—in the next play, or the next game."

  Bird contends that Magic may have been a victim of a Celtics home-court advantage. In 1984 shot clocks were not positioned atop the baskets, as they are today. In Boston there were huge electronic boxes on the floor displaying how much time was left on the shot clock, but more often than not they were obstructed by a courtside photographer or a fan who had draped his or her jacket over it.

  "It seemed like someone was always sitting in front of them clocks," Bird said. "I bet Magic couldn't even see how much time was left. I never could. What I used to do was check the time during the time-out, then count down in my head once I got out there."

  In the aftermath of the loss, Magic reminded anyone who would listen that the Lakers had accomplished what they had set out to do: win a game in Boston. No one was interested in that angle. They were too focused on the mismanagement of the clock in the final seconds.

  Johnson was vilified in the Los Angeles and Boston media for the glaring error, but he never said anything about his coach instructing him to call the time-out. He absorbed the worst public flogging of his young career in silence.

  "I just felt, being one of the leaders of the team, I had to take the criticism," Magic said. "You don't want a situation where you are contradicting your teammates or your coach. We had to stick together."

  The Lakers flew home to Los Angeles with their humbled point guard in unfamiliar territory. For the first time in his career, Magic found himself—and others—dwelling on his mistakes. The night before Game 3, the man who had fashioned a career out of positive self-talk had to keep pushing images of his mistakes out of his mind. It didn't help that Bird, his nemesis, was emerging as the catalyst of the Celtics.

  Riley, recognizing that his floor leader was shaken, instructed him to push the ball on every miss. "Let's take them out of their game," he said to Johnson.

  The Lakers began with an 18–4 run and demolished Boston 137–104 in Game 3. Their 51 fast-break chances pinned the Celtics with their largest playoff defeat in history. Magic was dazzling, dishing out 21 assists and completely controlling the tempo. Bird had 30 points and 12 free throws in the game, but sensing the series was slipping away, verbally assaulted his team with the aim of spurring them on.

  "Until we get our heads where they belong, we're in trouble," Bird declared after Game 3. "We're a team that plays with heart and soul, and today the heart wasn't there. I can't believe a team like this would let LA come out and push us around like they did. We played like sissies."

  His anger was neither contrived nor fleeting. Bird could see yet another chance at a ring faltering and he wasn't going to stand idly by and allow it to happen.

  "I wanted to fight every teammate I had after Game 3," Bird said. "I did everything I could in the papers to get them fired up. I knew if something didn't change, we were going to lose. So I called them sissies, told them they played like girls. I didn't know if there would be some backlash, but I didn't care.

  "I was not going to watch Magic celebrating in front of me again."

  When reporters relayed Bird's rant to his coach, Jones suppressed a smile. Although he did not publicly condone or condemn Bird's remarks, he was privately thrilled that his best player had challenged the team.

  "It was needed," Jones said, "and it was done by the only guy who could get away with it."

  Although the insults may have been shocking to the public, Bird's outburst was nothing his teammates hadn't heard before. From the moment he slipped on his Celtics jersey, Bird had demanded excellence—of himself and of those around him.

  "Larry was always saying stuff like that to us," Ainge shrugged. "We knew we played like garbage. Larry's comments usually reflected how we felt as a team."

  When Bird returned to his Los Angeles hotel room, the message light on his phone was blinking. He wasn't in the mood to talk to anyone and didn't bother to check his messages. Later that night, his phone rang. Steve Riley, Bird's friend and the vice president of sales for the Celtics, was on the line.

  "You guys are done. It's over," Riley said.

  "Bullshit!" Bird retorted. "We're a long way from that."

  The morning after Game 3, Magic was picking up some dry cleaning in his Culver City neighborhood when a fan asked him if he thought James Worthy would be the MVP of the series once the Lakers "wrapped things up." The Lakers' floor general winced. He had read Bird's "sissies" comments and understood the psychology behind it. The series, he knew, was far from over.

  While Johnson was running errands, K. C. Jones was ushering Bird and his teammates into the visitors' locker room at the Forum. He shut the door, turned down the lights, and plugged in the projector.

  "Watch," Jones said, then fell silent. Assistant coach Chris Ford started rolling the game film, with repeated clips of the Celtics getting beaten down the floor by the Lakers. The players said little. The images of Scott stroking pull-up jumpers on the wing untouched, Worthy streaking to the basket unscathed, and Magic, alone in the open floor, hitting his teammates with no-look passes, said it all.

  "That was K.C.'s style," Ford said. "Watch the film. See the embarrassment. Do something about it."

  Jones turned the lights back up, faced his team, and said calmly, "No more lay-ups."

  As the players migrated to the Forum court to begin practice, McHale turned to Ainge, his closest friend on the team, and said, "We've got to foul someone hard."

  Ainge rolled his eyes. He had played the role of the irksome antagonist since the day he joined the Celtics. As the last line of defense on transition defense, he was the one who usually grabbed Magic or some other opposing superstar on the way to the basket and endured the wrath of the opposition for it.

  "Kevin, when have you ever hit anybody?" Ainge said.

  McHale chuckled, but he was not amused.

  "We were a bunch of pretty surly guys at that point," Ainge said.

  Before Game 4, Jones switched D.J.'s assignment. He would be responsible for shadowing Magic the rest of the series. Only then did D.J. reveal to his coach how disappointed he had been not to assume that role in the first place. "I wish D.J. had said something to me sooner," Jones said. "If he had, I would have let him take Magic."

  Although D.J. did have success tempering Magic's success, the Lakers still held a 76–70 advantage in the third quarter when Ram-bis, LA's version of a blue-collar grinder, streaked to the basket in transition. McHale, hustling to get back, remembered the edict from his coach: no easy lay-ups. As Rambis continued to the basket, Carr goaded McHale, "Hit him!!"

  Rambis approached the basket at a sharp angle. McHale had already made up his mind to grab the Lakers forward and throw him down, which was a common (and accepted) tactic in the mideighties on a breakaway play. But Rambis was farther from the basket than McHale had estimated, and when the Celtics forward delivered the hit, he wasn't able to cushion Rambis's fall the way he'd planned.

  Although Rambis knew a Boston player was coming for him, he couldn't initially identify the culprit. It appeared to him the player was coming for him at considerable speed, so he concentrated on holding on to the ball and bracing himself for contact. The last thing he saw before he absorbed the hit was his own foot, which seemed to be almost as high as the rim.

  "Man, this is going to hurt," Rambis thought as McHale clothes-lined him, sendi
ng him sprawling.

  "Oh, there's going to be a fight now," McHale said to himself once he realized how badly he had flattened Rambis.

  The Los Angeles forward was fortunate that instead of landing on his head, as he feared, his rear end absorbed most of the blow. When his body banged onto the floor, his first thought was, "Nothing hurts." His second was, "Where's McHale?" He popped up and charged toward the Celtics forward, but came at McHale from behind Worthy, who felt the presence of a moving body coming at him and wheeled around to defend himself. He shoved Rambis into referee Jess Kersey and a group of court-side reporters, unaware that it was his own teammate he was manhandling. Cooper, weary of Carr's verbal attacks from the bench, lunged at him, and both benches emptied. Although no actual punches landed, the psychological blow delivered by the Celtics was apparent.

  McHale watched the proceedings with part awe and part elation. The flagrant foul was so contrary to anything he had ever done in his career that even his own coach would admit later he was flabbergasted by it.

  "People say it was planned," McHale said. "It wasn't. If I thought about it ahead of time, I would have done it to Magic or Kareem or Worthy. They were a helluva lot more important than Rambis."

  The brawl ignited chaos on the floor and turmoil in the stands. The Lakers, on the verge of putting the series away, lost their composure. They blew a five-point lead with under a minute to play behind a pair of free throws from Bird and a three-point play from Parish.

  Predictably, the game came down to the final minute of overtime after D.J. missed a double-clutch shot in the key and Magic rebounded the ball. Johnson galloped down the floor on what would have been a 3-on-1 fast break and an easy Lakers basket, but the officials had already whistled D.J. for reaching in after his miss.

  Magic went to the line with 35 seconds on the clock. Normally, his concentration when shooting free throws was flawless, but now he was second-guessing each move he made on the court.