Back from the Dead

by Bill Walton

  We ended the regular season with the third-best record in the history of the NBA. Most of our losses were to the league’s worst teams—twice to the Nets, then once each to Indiana, Cleveland, Chicago, New York, Detroit, Sacramento, Phoenix, Denver, Washington, and Dallas. But now none of that mattered—nothing did. It was a blank slate, it was the playoffs, and the golden road to the championship was just getting started.

  * * *

  We started the playoffs against Chicago, who didn’t have a very good team at all. But they did have this young player named Michael Jordan, in just his second year.

  Michael had missed almost all of the regular season with a broken foot. His own team management didn’t want him to play at all, but he said he was ready. And he went for it.

  In life, there is always the retrospective analysis with anything that later turns out to be great and special. When Michael first joined the NBA, this was a league that was owned by Kareem, Larry Bird, Magic, and Dr. J, and the Celtics, Lakers, and 76ers. It was also an era that was not dominated by hype. Like how today if you make a basket, they immediately stop everything, call you the new greatest player ever, make a movie about you, and put you in the Hall of Fame before the ball is put back in-bounds.

  So when Michael Jordan first joins the Bulls and they’re in their first training camp, they don’t even have any press coverage at all. And after the first few days, the Bulls coach, Kevin Loughery, finally meets a few of the assorted media that have come by to check on things. Somebody eventually gets around to asking how the new guy, Michael Jordan, is doing.

  Coach Kevin, himself a fine NBA player in his own day, takes a beat, then a breath, and quietly deadpans, “He’s better than we thought.”

  That same thing happened to us.

  In the first game of this best-of-five series with Boston having the home-court advantage, we won easily, but Michael went for 49 points. We didn’t think much of it, figuring he’d never do that again.

  In the next game, also in Boston, Michael went for 63 points, an NBA playoff record that still stands, fouling many of us out in the process. Fortunately, Larry stayed around and pulled us through to victory in double overtime.

  After the game, talking among ourselves, we readily agreed that “this guy” was really “pretty good” and that maybe we should “pay attention” to him.

  And so we came up with the strategy that no matter what happened in the next game, now in Chicago, every time Michael got the ball—WHEREVER—we were going to double-team him and make him give it up. And we would take our chances on having Michael’s teammates on the Bulls—Orlando Woolridge, Charles Oakley, and Dave Corzine—see if they could beat us.

  We routed them and sent them home early. Michael was worn down and out and never really got going that day, reinforcing the notion that even if you’re Michael Jordan, it’s not ever really how good you are, but rather the quality of your teammates.

  And that’s what we, and Larry Bird, had.

  * * *

  We moved on to face Atlanta, whom we had not lost to all season long, despite their plethora of talent, size, and strength, and the magnificence of Dominique Wilkins.

  The first two games in Boston were both wins, notable only for how well we kept playing, getting ever more focused as we homed in on the title. There was a growing circus over how well we were playing, and more and more people and media wanted to come and watch. But there was simply no more room; the Garden was always packed full, if not overflowing. So around this time, someone on the operations side of the Celtics decided they could squeeze another row of seats into the joint, if they just cut most of the length of the legs off the chairs and then put them in front of the existing front-row seats. More people, even closer to the action—the Garden crowd was never more intimidating. When Larry saw this, he immediately noted that Red must have gone over to Jerry Sichting’s house and taken all the furniture.

  Down in Atlanta, we won the first game to go up 3–0, and then the Hawks finally managed a win in Game 4. No one could remember the last time they’d beaten us, but we just didn’t play well enough at all to get it done on the road. I was unable to play in either of the games in Atlanta. I had badly hurt my knee in a tough collision in one of the games back in Boston and I couldn’t go, despite the nonstop medical treatment and therapy.

  Now, back in Boston for Game 5, we and our fans were more than ready. It was one of those magical games of perfection that this Celtic team was regularly bringing now.

  I was able to play a bit again after my knee injury. But this game was over from the opening tip. We would go on these incredible runs where we would score on almost every possession, and the Hawks rarely scored at all.

  At one point in the second half, with our crowd going predictably wild, Danny made another in a string of great plays, and Tree Rollins, the Atlanta center who had a long and bitter history with Danny, took the ball out-of-bounds after our made basket. Instead of throwing it in to his teammate to bring the ball up the court, a frustrated Rollins wound up and threw the ball right at Danny’s head—as hard as he could, from near-point-blank range. Tree was not the first—or last—guy who wanted to do that. But in the midst of an electrifying run for the Celtics, now everybody came to a complete stop, figuring something was about to explode—and none of it was going to be good.

  So while we were all standing there waiting for the refs to come in and do something to put the fire out, Danny, quick to realize that the play had not yet been whistled dead, raced to the other end of the floor, where the ball was resting quietly, all by itself. He picked it up and dribbled it furiously back up the court, while everybody else thought that the action had already been stopped by the refs. And just a couple of strides across half-court, and still with his live dribble, Danny pulled up and shot another really long three, which went in. Everybody else was just standing there watching.

  The refs called the play good, and Atlanta’s Coach Fratello had to call one of his few remaining time-outs. Our crowd never stopped roaring with glee for us—and disdain for Tree and the Atlanta Hawks—the entire night.

  We won by 33 points to send the Hawks home for good. Fratello, when asked after the game what he thought was needed to have made a difference in this game and the series, quipped softly, “We were unable to make any trades or sign new players during the game.”

  * * *

  With our early and easy disposal of Atlanta, and while waiting for the series on the other side to be decided between Philadelphia and Milwaukee, we had way too much time on our hands, but there was nothing we could do about it.

  After the Hawks series, we were out, probably at the Scotch ’n Sirloin, toasting yet another Celtic masterpiece when somebody came up with the seemingly brilliant idea that, we’re getting really close here, guys, why don’t we all make a vow and commitment tonight, right here and now, that none of us will take another drink until we win the championship—just to make sure that we don’t leave anything to chance.

  And everybody jumped aboard, raising our glasses and toasting with the loud proclamation, “Yeah! I’ll drink to THAT!”

  Then Kevin, always the voice of reason and perspective, quietly asked around the table, “Hey, guys, we’re going to win the championship this year, aren’t we?”

  And everybody chimed in one more time, “YEAH! I’ll drink to that, too!”

  Milwaukee beat Philadelphia. And when the games finally did start again, right before one of the first two games in Boston, there was an on-court pregame presentation where the NBA awarded me the league’s Sixth Man of the Year trophy.

  When the game did get going, I stunk it up big-time. We won handily—we always did. And when Larry was asked after the victory what it meant to the team to have me win this Sixth Man honor, he laughed.

  “Sixth Man? Of the NBA? Bill Walton? Are you kidding me? This is a farce. Tonight he was our worst player out of twelve; and he was Milwaukee’s best player all at the same time! Sixth Man? Bill Walton? Spare
me. Please.”

  And he was right.

  * * *

  Milwaukee had no chance against us. This series was not going to last very long. Everybody knew it, so the NBA and CBS scheduled Games 3 and 4, both in Milwaukee, to be played back-to-back on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, so that they could get Larry and the Celtics on TV twice before it was over.

  In the first game in Milwaukee, on Saturday, we suffered a very tough loss. Scott Wedman got hurt. Late in a game that we controlled throughout, Scotty got caught in a tough spot defensively as the Bucks’ huge, powerful, and mighty forward Terry Cummings came driving across the lane. And as Terry planted his foot and exploded to the rim, his knee drove into Scott’s back; Scott had gotten turned around on some defensive rotations. Cummings was so big and strong, the collision broke Scotty’s front ribs. Scott lay on the ground motionless for quite some time. It was very scary, and a terrible loss for our team. Scott Wedman was a great player for us, in immeasurable ways.

  When they asked Larry about it after the game, when it was known that Scotty was not going to be able to play the rest of the season and any of these playoffs, he immediately piped in with a reference to 1984: “Well, the last time Scotty broke a bone in the playoffs, we won the championship, so I think we’ll be fine.”

  The gathered reporters didn’t want to write stuff like that, but that was Larry. So they gave him another chance and asked Larry to be serious here for a minute and to please give them a quote that they could use and that showed the seriousness of Scotty’s injury, and his value to the team, and what it all meant going forward.

  Larry looked at them like they were wasting his time. He took a deep breath, bent down to tie the laces of his shoes, straightened back up, cleared his throat one last time, and muttered as he grabbed his game bag and headed out the door to walk back across the street to our hotel, “Better him than me!”

  The next day at Milwaukee’s Mecca, for Game 4, we had to tighten up our rotation, as Scotty was unavailable, but our starters overpowered the Bucks regardless. Even without Scotty we had a more complete squad than them. And we had Larry Bird.

  As the game was winding down, we had the lead, we were playing well enough, and we were going to win. But we still had to keep scoring and keep the clock moving. It was far from over. One of the real strengths of our team was that there was very little dribbling—ever. And as we would move the ball around the perimeter and then inside and back out, the ball inevitably wound up in Larry’s hands—which was always a good idea.

  And with just a couple of minutes to go in the game, and the series, the ball came through Larry on the left side of the court about halfway between the three-point line and the midcourt divider. Larry swung the ball through his triple-threat position to clear some space for himself, as he always did, but instead of continuing the play with either a pass or a dribble (he was too far away from the basket to shoot it) Larry uncharacteristically held on to the ball, and put it to rest on his hip.

  We were totally unsure what he was doing here, so we kept moving through our patterns as we always did. But Larry just kept looking—at us, at the Bucks, and at the shot clock.

  K. C. got up from his seat on the bench to see what was going on, the crowd came somewhat alive at this very unusual turn of events, and everybody just kept looking at Larry. And this keeps going, with the shot clock ticking relentlessly down, and still nobody can figure out what’s happening here.

  Finally, with just one or two seconds left in our timed possession, and we’re all still in futile motion, Larry takes the ball from his hip, swings it up into his shooting motion, and delivers a thirty-plus-foot three-pointer that swishes through the basket.

  The next time down the court for us, the same exact scenario develops, with the ball on Larry’s hip until a second or two is left on the shot clock. Again he rises up and drains another thirty-plus-foot three-pointer.

  This happened at least four times in a row down the closing stretch. I would like to say it was the most remarkable thing I’ve ever seen in a basketball game—but this was Larry Bird. And with Larry, the unthinkable, the impossible, the incredible, the unimaginable was commonplace—every day.

  And that was all for Milwaukee.

  * * *

  Here we were, exactly where we were supposed to be—the NBA Finals. We were facing the Houston Rockets, whom the Celtics had defeated in the 1981 Finals but who were now sporting a completely different lineup from that ’81 team. The Rockets were now coached by Bill Fitch, who had been the Celtics’ coach in that previous matchup, a U.S. Marine who always seemed to have a scowl on his face. Larry loved him. I didn’t get that same sense from the rest of the guys.

  The Rockets had impressed down the stretch, toppling the reigning champion Lakers in the previous round. With Hakeem Olajuwon, Ralph Sampson, Rodney McCray, Robert Reid, Craig Ehlo, and Jim Peterson, they had a deep and formidable front line that was young, explosive, and talented.

  But we had Larry Bird and K. C. Jones.

  Their backcourt had been decimated earlier in the regular season when their lead guard, John Lucas, had been kicked out of the league for substance abuse issues. The cliff came for John and the Rockets the night the Celtics beat them there in Houston during the regular season. John Lucas, who had a real tough go that night, one that didn’t stop with the end of the game, never really recovered to be the top player he could have been. Fortunately, John certainly has been able to get the rest of his life together, and today does exemplary work on every level of his life.

  The Finals began right where we left off—with the Celtics as a team playing spectacularly. Larry continued to play like a man possessed, and Kevin took it upon himself to personally destroy Ralph Sampson, Hakeem, and anybody else that Coach Fitch tried on him. Neither of the first two games in Boston was close at any point.

  Shifting to Houston for the next three games leveled the playing field somewhat. Game 3 went down to the wire, and we bobbled too many of the closing moments, giving the game away with sloppy, careless execution at the end. Game 4 was a thriller, and Larry made some monumental plays. It all came down to a dagger three-pointer in the closing seconds that Larry nailed to give us an insurmountable 3–1 series lead.

  Game 5 saw the Rockets at their worst, as Sampson started a fight with our little Jerry Sichting—who might as well have been Delilah. Ralph had at last two feet in height and probably one hundred pounds of body mass on poor little Jerry. Order was restored quickly, but we did not play with enough emotional commitment to even make a game of it. We gave them the victory without a fight or exacting any price, and left embarrassed and disgusted by our performance.

  The plane ride home to Boston was very quiet, solemn, and reflective. As we were coming into the airspace around Boston, they told us that so many Celtic fans had come to the airport, it was not going to be safe or possible for us to go through the regular terminal. When we landed, we were taken to a remote airport location and then transported home with police escorts. Our fans were ready. They did not like the way things had turned out in Game 5, where we were pushed around down in Texas by a desperate opponent on their last legs, grasping to hold on to anything as they were going down. And our fans were not about to take anything for granted.

  The city of Boston and the entire New England region was very tense as we approached game time on yet another Sunday morning on CBS. My brother Bruce, as he had done in Portland nine years earlier, showed up with more of his friends—just to make sure that everything would turn out right. He insisted on seats as close to Ralph Sampson as was legally possible.

  The guys who ran the locker room, Wayne and Corky, called everybody on Saturday and told us that we would not be able to get to the Garden as we usually did, because of the crowds that were already gathering. We all had to meet at our practice court at Hellenic College and the police were going to have to escort us in, on a bus—to our own home game.

  We rode silently in on the magic bus. Red was with
us. He sat in the front seat opposite the driver. He was smoking his cigar. It was all very serious—and quiet. Even Kevin and Danny were silently still—in a relative way. We couldn’t get to the Garden—the crowds were so thick. The Boston police had to clear a path, and our fans were wildly fierce, with hours still to go before tip-off. The bus took us up the back ramp right inside the place.

  When Larry came in from his individual pregame shoot-around, he got all of our attention immediately.

  “Guys, it’s an hour and a half before tip-off, and our crowd is already in their seats, and they are ready—as ready as I’ve ever seen anyone. They want blood, guys, and right now the blood they want is the blood of the Houston Rockets. But I’m telling you guys right here and now that if we don’t deliver today and get this done, they’re going to want our blood. Now let’s make sure that we bring it.”

  When we came onto the floor, it was surreal—the fans would not let up. They wanted the Rockets, and they really wanted Ralph Sampson. There was this little, tiny, and very old lady. She was right up close, and she had hand-painted a sign that was bigger than she was. It read something like, “Hey, Ralph—I’m 5'2" and eighty years old. Do you want to fight me, too?” And this little old lady wanted Ralph. She kept trying to run onto the court and go at him. And she kept shaking her clenched fists and her giant sign right in Ralph’s face. She was ready to kill him. And she was one of the calmer ones that day.