When the Game Was Ours (18 page)

"It was the most devastating moment of my career," he said. "If I had something else I liked to do in terms of competition, I probably would have done it. It would have been best for me to get away from basketball at that point."

The balloons were donated to a children's hospital. West, who had submitted 42 points, 13 rebounds, and 12 assists, became the first MVP of the Finals to play for the losing side. The series epitomized his professional legacy: brilliance in defeat against Boston.

"Jerry never talked much about it," said Magic, "but he didn't have to. It showed on his face. The man had been tortured by the Boston Celtics."

By 1984 there were new players and new story lines to explore in the Celtics-Lakers rivalry, but the presence of West and Riley and Auerbach and K. C. Jones, who had starred with the Celtics on the court and was now their coach, only added to the intrigue.

"It was impossible to ignore the history," said Lakers forward Kurt Rambis. "Even if we wanted to, we couldn't. There were news articles, stories, conversations, remembrances.

"It wasn't just about us. We were playing for Wilt Chamberlain and Jerry West and Elgin Baylor."

Bird won his first of three consecutive league MVP trophies that season, averaging 24.2 points, 10.1 rebounds, and 6.6 assists a game.

Magic's numbers were also gaudy—17.6 points, 7.3 rebounds, and 13.1 assists—but he had not yet reached the elite status of his rival. The individual tension developing between the two wasn't restricted to Larry and Magic. Each Celtic and Laker was instructed not to cross the line into enemy territory.

"I used to love two of the old Celtics—Jo Jo White and Hank Finkel," said LA forward James Worthy. "When I got to LA and was told I had to hate Boston, I thought to myself, 'What do I have to do with this history?' But then I realized I was part of it as long as it said Lakers across my chest."

Bird was aware in general terms of the Lakers-Celtics wars of the past, but he wasn't particularly interested in learning the nuts and bolts of the rivalry. While he had great respect for the players before him, he wasn't inclined to study their accomplishments. His developing rivalry with Magic was already being compared to the epic battles of Russell and Chamberlain, yet those debates were of little consequence to Bird.

"Obviously I had heard of Bill Russell and the championships he won," Bird said. "But if anyone had pressed me on which years, I wouldn't have known. When I was 23 years old, I thought Bill Russell was 100 years old. That's the way it is when you are 23.

"You don't care what happened before. You want to make your own history."

Since both Magic and Larry had already won an NBA championship, dethroning one another became the salacious subplot. Magic was tired of hearing about the "gritty" Bird, and Larry was sick of the "dynamic" Johnson. By playoff time, both stars were aggravated by comparisons and questions regarding the other. The competition between them had ratcheted up yet another notch.

"It was annoying," Magic said. "We were both trying to carve out our own niche, on an individual and a team level, and everyone kept linking us together. I didn't like it. I kept telling people, 'I'm nothing like him.' We didn't even play the same position."

That did not prevent basketball pundits from engaging in a reoccurring debate: who is better, Larry or Magic? Both Johnson and Bird feigned indifference, yet each knew their first head-to-head clash in the pros would give whoever won the edge.

"Magic didn't sit around and talk about Larry," said Rambis. "But clearly he was on Earvin's mind. He was on
all
of our minds."

He should have been. An ornery Bird spent the better part of 1983–84 ruminating over the collapse of his team the previous spring. After losing to Milwaukee in the 1983 playoffs, Bird punished himself with rigorous off-season conditioning drills in the searing southern Indiana sun. During his long, arduous runs through the hills of Orange County, Bird cursed his team's inability to focus and their preoccupation with upstaging their coach, Bill Fitch.

The nucleus of the freewheeling group that won an NBA championship with such flourish two years earlier in 1981 had disintegrated into a collection of dispirited, divided, and, in some cases, openly defiant players. Although Bird resolutely stood by Fitch publicly and privately, even he could see the coach had lost the team.

"It was the petty stuff that turned us on him," explained Carr, one of Fitch's chief antagonists.

During a road trip to New York in 1979, his first season with Boston, Carr made plans to meet some family after the game at Charley O's, a restaurant directly across the street from Madison Square Garden. As he was about to leave, Boston trainer Ray Melchiorre informed him that Fitch's rule was that every member of the team was required to go back to the hotel on the team bus.

The hotel was nearly 15 blocks uptown. Carr stared at Melchiorre in disbelief.

"You mean to tell me you are going to make me drive on this bus 20 minutes, then take a cab back to the exact spot where the bus is parked?" he said.

"That's right," Melchiorre said.

Carr threw down his towel in disgust, grabbed his bag, and stomped off. As he made his way to the back of the bus, he complained, "I signed a five-year deal to be treated like this?"

Despite their dissatisfaction with their coach, the Celtics initially appeared to be poised for another title run in 1982–83. They broke out of the gates winning 16 of their first 20 games. Bird was averaging 22.9 points a night and tended to describe to some hapless defensive opponent in painstaking detail how he was going to score on him before carrying out the deed in exactly the fashion he outlined.

He developed a friendly but competitive running dialogue with Knicks trainer Mike Saunders, and whenever Boston played New York, he'd call his baskets as he ran past the Knicks bench.

"Bank shot," Bird would inform Saunders, then fly down the floor and kiss the ball in off the glass.

"Twenty-footer, left side," Bird would announce, before he stuck a long jumper in Knicks defender Trent Tucker's face.

"I always considered myself a pretty confident person," said former Celtics player Danny Ainge, "but I've never seen anyone who believed in himself like Larry did."

Even so, team chemistry was an issue. Mindful of the blossoming talents of Magic, Auerbach acquired rugged defensive specialist Quinn Buckner from Milwaukee with hopes he could help neutralize Johnson.

"I was sure we'd be seeing the Lakers in the Finals that spring [of 1983]," said Auerbach. "I don't mind telling you that Magic worried the hell out of me. He was so big and so strong. We needed someone who could be physical with him."

The addition of Buckner left Tiny Archibald, an All-Star the previous season, on the bench. Archibald struggled to accept his reduced role (the team would waive him shortly after the season ended), while Parish, McHale, Maxwell, and Carr chafed at Fitch's persistent prodding.

Maxwell was sitting in the locker room with his headphones on after the team had lost a close game when Fitch strode toward him and tapped him on the shoulder.

"If you ever have those headphones on again, I'll break them in half," Fitch said, and demonstrated the motion of snapping them in two. For the rest of the season, Celtics players walked up to Maxwell and mimicked the same snapping motion, reducing Maxwell to gales of laughter and further antagonizing the coach.

Boston won 56 games that season but finished 9 games behind Philadelphia in the standings. By the time the postseason rolled around, the players were at their breaking point. Fitch installed a curfew, and one night in Houston sat in the lobby waiting to make sure each of them adhered to it. McHale and Carr waited until seconds before the curfew before sauntering inside to their rooms.

"It was a bad season," Ainge said. "Max and Chief weren't listening. They had totally tuned Fitch out. And Kevin wasn't happy either."

"It was a professional mutiny," said Buckner. "They just wouldn't play for Bill Fitch. They spent half a season trying to embarrass him. That's not an environment I was familiar with. Bill deserved better."

In Game 1 of their best-of-seven series with the Bucks in the 1983 Eastern Conference Semi-Finals, the Celtics were thumped 116–95 on their own floor. Fitch, infuriated by the insubordination of his players, humiliated his starters by making them check back into the game in the fourth quarter of a blowout. The home crowd booed lustily.

Boston's performance deteriorated from there. In Game 4, with the Celtics already trailing 3–0 in the series, Buckner recalled Fitch imploring the players to push the ball up the floor.

"Instead, it looked like three guys were literally taking the ball up at a pace three times slower than it should have been—on purpose," Buckner said.

"I admit it," Carr said. "Our goal in 1983 wasn't to win a championship. It was to get rid of Fitch."

After the Bucks' sweep, McHale caused a stir when he declared he could "hold his head high" following the playoff debacle. A somber Bird contradicted McHale's assessment by saying all Celtics should be embarrassed, and he promised things would be different next season—or else.

"I was ticked off," Bird said. "After the game I told Red, 'Hey, look. We've got no leadership here. If you want me to lead this team, I will. But we've got to get back to winning championships and forget all this other crap, because it's killing us.' And I meant it."

Bird didn't limit his exasperation to a conversation with Auerbach. Once the locker room door was closed, he leveled a brutally honest assessment of their shortcomings at his teammates, including their poisonous attitude toward Fitch. Though Bird didn't single out any player by name, he did not hesitate to talk specifically about issues he had with players' commitment, conditioning, and attitude.

"Most of what he said was unprintable," Buckner said. "And he was very pointed in his comments. Most of the guys were looking around the room as if to say, 'He's not talking about me.' But they must have gotten the message, because everyone came back in better shape the next season."

Fitch was fired that summer and K. C. Jones was elevated from assistant to head coach. Bird was not pleased that Fitch was designated to take the fall for a team that quit on him. "As much as I loved playing with some of those guys, they were the ones who should have been shipped out," Bird said. "I told them, 'Someday you'll look back and realize Bill Fitch was the best coach for this team.'"

Bird retreated to his newly constructed home in West Baden, Indiana, complete with its full-length outdoor court. He added a stepback jumper to his arsenal, refining it by shooting 800 of them a day. Buckner came to visit Bird that summer and agreed to participate in his morning workout. They awoke at 7
A.M.
, put on their track shoes, and ran five miles—uphill. Buckner was amazed by the steep incline of Bird's regular route and was walking by the halfway mark. Bird was not a fast runner, but he had long strides and the determined look of an athlete scorned. He and Buckner did not discuss the Bucks' sweep, but Bird's dissatisfaction was implied in the intensity of his workouts.

After his uphill run, Bird hopped on his bicycle and pedaled 20 miles around the county. Then, with the burning sun at its peak, he spent an additional hour and a half shooting 500 jumpers and 500 free throws.

"I was getting ready for a whole lot of years of us and the Lakers," Bird said. "We were young and they were young. They had Kareem. They had Magic. They were making moves. I wanted to make sure we kept up."

Auerbach felt the same way. Still in search of a physical player to offset the brilliance of Magic, he acquired Dennis Johnson on June 27, 1983, from the Phoenix Suns. The price was Robey, Bird's sidekick and drinking companion. Bird's teammates insisted in subsequent years it was no accident that number 33 won his first MVP trophy after his buddy Robey had moved on.

At the time, the move to bring in D.J. was viewed as somewhat of a gamble. Although his talent was unquestionable, he had developed a reputation as a difficult player. Seattle coach Lenny Wilkens had branded him a "cancer," and the image lingered. Yet D.J. had proven to be a legitimate hindrance to Magic in the Western Conference, able to offset his strength with physical play of his own.

Johnson and Johnson were hardly strangers. They played against one another in Los Angeles during the summer months and occasionally dined together with their wives. That tradition came to a screeching halt once the trade was made and D.J. became a Celtic. The summer after the deal, he ran into Magic just as he was completing his workout.

"In the past it would have been, 'Hey, man, how you been? Where you going to be later? Let's hook up,'" D.J. said. "Not this time. It was, 'Hey, how are you doing? See you later.'"

"Once he started wearing Celtics green, we were done socializing," Magic confirmed.

While the Celtics reinvented their backcourt by acquiring Dennis Johnson, the Lakers had done some maneuvering of their own in preparation for the 1983–84 season. Norm Nixon, a mainstay in the Lakers' rotation for the previous six seasons, was swapped along with Eddie Jordan to San Diego for seven-footer Swen Nater and the rights to rookie Byron Scott.

West wisely recognized that the Lakers needed a lethal perimeter threat to exploit the double teams that Abdul-Jabbar and Magic were drawing. Yet the trade was not well received in the LA locker room. Nixon was popular with his teammates and the players were wary of the rookie Scott, who had starred at Arizona State and grew up rooting for the Lakers, but quickly realized he was going to have to bide his time before he would be accepted as a member of the Lakers' inner circle.

Scott made some early overtures to Magic, who at 24 was the closest to him in age, but the reception was tepid at best. In the ensuing years, Scott would become one of Johnson's most valued friends, but in 1983–84 he was just another rookie who was going to have to prove to Magic that he belonged.

The Lakers' nucleus of Magic, Kareem, Worthy, Bob McAdoo, Cooper, and Wilkes (who was stricken with an intestinal infection that restricted him to limited duty in the postseason) represented the optimal personnel for playing an up-tempo style. The Lakers averaged 115.6 points a night and shot 53.2 percent from the floor. Magic, who led the league in assists that season with 13.1 a game, distributed the ball with alarming ease.