When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [42]
"I think we can win a few of these," said Magic, cradling the championship trophy in the afterglow of his superb showing.
The Celtics had other ideas. With the number-one pick in the 1980 draft, courtesy of a previous trade with Detroit, they went shopping for a front-court player to help contain Kareem. After briefly pursuing Virginia center Ralph Sampson, who maintained he would not come out of college, Auerbach turned his attention to the graduating senior prospects, among them Purdue center Joe Barry Carroll and Minnesota forward Kevin McHale.
Auerbach didn't like Carroll's game but deftly convinced everyone in the league that he was about to select him. Golden State, which also needed help in the middle, wanted Carroll badly. Auerbach ended up trading the number-one and number-thirteen picks to the Warriors for the number-three pick (which Auerbach used to take McHale, the player he wanted all along) and an underachieving center by the name of Robert Parish, who, Auerbach surmised, would be an able backup to Cowens.
The Big Three was born, although it would be five more seasons before McHale became a starter. Parish was not projected to be a starter either, but on October 1, 1980, while the team was in Terre Haute, Indiana, waiting to take the bus to Evansville for an exhibition game, Cowens walked up the top step and announced he was retiring.
"I'm sorry, guys," Cowens said. "My heart just isn't in it anymore."
Bird was stunned. Not only did he look up to Cowens, but the big redhead had become one of his closest friends on the team. Cowens had given Bird no indication he was feeling this way.
"I was a little mad," Bird said. "I thought we had a great team with Dave. But without him? Robert wasn't ready. And Kevin? Who knew, really?"
Bird turned to Parish, who was sitting three seats behind him on the bus, and said, "You better get into shape."
Although Parish was one of the favorite targets of the hard-driving Fitch, the coach whipped him into condition, and Parish's game flourished accordingly. The seven-footer ran the floor like a long-legged gazelle, dutifully filling the lanes in transition even though most of the time he never saw the ball. Bird became so appreciative of the center's commitment that he made sure he held the ball back a couple of times so Parish could come down as the trailer and be rewarded with two points.
The transition from Cowens to Parish, whose weapon of choice was a high-arching rainbow jumper, was more seamless than anyone could have hoped. Yet Bird couldn't shake the lingering feeling that Cowens had let them down.
"I just couldn't understand why he couldn't wait and leave at the end of the season," Bird said.
Boston averaged 109.9 points in 1980–81, a byproduct of a deep front line and a resourceful little point guard named Nate "Tiny" Archibald. True to his moniker, the former New York City hotshot stood about 5-foot-8 (although he was listed officially as 6-foot-1), but compensated for his lack of size with considerable guile and quickness. Tiny went around big men and small men, under screens and over screens. He could drive, shoot, and distribute the ball.
"He literally made us go," Bird said.
McHale, the new rookie, was 6-foot-10 with shoulders so broad it looked as though he'd forgotten to remove the coat hanger from his shirt. He was long and agile and every bit as easygoing as Bird was single-minded. It made for a fascinating relationship between two successful forwards who approached their craft in vastly different manners.
"Larry was relentless," M. L. Carr said. "He was there when we came in to practice, and there when we left. One day I said to Kevin, 'Why don't you be like Larry?' He said, 'Hey, man, I've got a life.'"
Throughout the early portion of the 1980–81 season, Magic was grounded by torn cartilage in his knee that left him in street clothes for 45 games. Magic had never been seriously injured before and was impatient to return. As the Celtics pounded