Perkisaflashback: The Rivalry Renewed
The first of probably many retrospectives on the Celtics/Pistons rivalry. This is from Sports Illustrated in 1987.
Like two Back-Alley Brawlers, the Boston Celtics and the Detroit Pistons had fought each other through six evenly matched games of the NBA’s Eastern Conference final. There had been fines and fists, cheap shots and long shots, low comedy and high drama. And now, as they neared the Game 7 finish line last Saturday at sold-out, sauna-hot Boston Garden, the Celts and the Pistons were still running neck and neck. Four minutes left, score 99-99.
Earlier, near the end of the third period, the poltergeists who inhabit the dark, spooky recesses of the Garden had worked their mischief on two of the Pistons’ top guns, Adrian Dantley and Vinnie Johnson. They had met head-on in a violent collision under the Detroit basket. Dantley was taken to Massachusetts General Hospital with a concussion (he was released on Sunday), while Johnson, suffering from a sore neck, didn’t play the final seven minutes.
But now, as Boston’s Danny Ainge released a three-pointer with a little more than four minutes left, the poltergeists really got into the flow. Ainge’s shot missed, but Larry Bird got the rebound. Bird tried a three-pointer that missed, but Kevin McHale retrieved. Bird tried another shot, and McHale got it back. Then McHale misfired on a driving jumper, but Robert Parish, who played 42 courageous minutes on a badly sprained ankle, came up with the rebound. It was crazy, improbable, illogical. No, it was simply Boston Garden in a seventh game. Parish’s shot underneath, the fifth of the sequence, was swatted away by Detroit’s Dennis Rodman. And the poltergeists swatted it back to Bird. Then to Ainge, to Dennis Johnson, back to Bird, over to Ainge, still in three-point range. “By the time I got it back, I was rested,” said Ainge.
He let it fly, and this time it swished—one minute and five seconds after his first attempt. Not only did it give the Celtics a lead—102-99—they never lost, with 3:06 left, but it also served surrealistic notice that the Pistons simply were not going to win an Eastern title in Boston Garden. Not in Game 7, not with Red Auerbach sitting in his seat near the parquet floor, not with K.C. Jones on the bench, not with Bird playing 48 exquisite minutes.
Final: Boston 117, Detroit 114. The win sent the bruised and battered defending champions into the NBA final against the Los Angeles Lakers, the Celtics’ fourth-straight shot at the title.
May 19th, 2008 at 7:31 pm
The Celtics just accomplished what Det could not do last year: Beat LeBron and the Cavs. And ‘08 LeBron is even nastier than ‘07 LeBron.
May 19th, 2008 at 8:50 pm
The Wispy Moustach-ed Always Prevail.
“Maybe next year..”
May 20th, 2008 at 1:34 am
May 20th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
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