When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [69]
As the Celtics boarded their team bus and headed to the airport to fly home to Boston, an elated Bird plopped down next to D.J. and said, "Can you believe we're still in this? They're trying to give us the championship."
D.J. nodded in agreement. He scored 22 points in Game 4 and would go on to average 21.5 points a game over the final four games of the series. It was no accident that production coincided with his new defensive assignment. Magic inspired him like no other opponent.
"D.J. was the smartest guy who ever guarded me," Magic said. "He knew how to make adjustments. If I was rolling with a certain move, D.J. would say, 'You got away with that in the last quarter. Not this one.' It might take Gerald Henderson a whole game to figure out what I was doing. Sometimes he wouldn't even realize it until the film session the next day."
The venue for Game 5 was the antiquated Boston Garden, the site of so many past colossal Laker disappointments. Boston was in the midst of a heat wave, and there was no air conditioning in the building, so temperatures hovered at close to 100 degrees on the court by game time. A Lakers official brought an oscillating fan into the suffocating visitors' locker room, but it provided little relief.
"It was miserable in there," Magic said. "I had already sweated through my uniform before we had even had our pregame talk."
Although the Celtics locker room was larger, it was equally oppressive. Yet Bird was upbeat in the hours leading up to Game 5. He had slept fitfully the previous night, rehashing the action through the first four games of the Finals, and woke up exhausted. "I was concerned how we were going to stop Magic from controlling the tempo," he said.
By the time he drove down Causeway Street to the Garden, the exhaustion had been replaced by adrenaline. He was unconcerned with the heat and humidity; it was no more stifling than the summer heat of French Lick. When he arrived at the Garden, he was relieved to discover that his teammates were not about to be deterred by the oppressive temperatures either.
"We were the 'dirty' team," Maxwell said. "We weren't used to playing in luxury like the Lakers. We were a no- frills operation. When that game got hotter and hotter and hotter, we were like, 'All right, bring it on.'"
With a sizable portion of America watching on television, Bird delivered one of the finest performances of his young career, scoring 34 points on 15-of-20 shooting and grabbing 17 rebounds. He hit long perimet er shots, drives to the basket with his opposite hand, post-up jump shots, and put-backs in traffic.
"I was hitting everything," Bird said. "I had that rhythm you dream of. It was a tremendous feeling. And our crowd was fantastic. I felt after Game 5 we had it."
As Jones watched Bird take over the game, he expected at least a hint of exuberance from his forward over his remarkable performance. Yet Bird's demeanor was unchanged.
"When you are having a game like that, you figure the guy is going to be jumping up and down," K.C. said. "Not Larry. He did it without flair.
"In that regard, he was the exact opposite of Magic."
The lasting image of that 119–108 victory was Abdul-Jabbar slumped on the Lakers bench, sucking in oxygen through a small mask attached to a tank. The big man shot 7 of 25 from the floor and had wilted in New England's sweltering summer heat. Yet the Celtics knew better than to discount the fiercely competitive Hall of Famer, who still had the most lethal weapon in the series: the unstoppable skyhook.
Magic kept clear of his center in the aftermath of the loss. By the time the Lakers returned home, which required another flight across the country for both clubs, Abdul-Jabbar was suffering from another migraine. He vomited in the locker room before Game 6, then went out and scored 30 points and grabbed 10 rebounds. Worthy, in an attempt to quell some of the growing