May 23, 1982: 76ers magnificent in seven; Celts fall, 120-106

Editor's note: This story ran in the Inquirer on May 24, 1982, the day after the Sixers defeated the Celtics in Game 7 of the Eastern Conference final in Boston Garden.

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BOSTON - The 76ers won the Big One yesterday.

Consider that for a while.

The Sixers won the big one in the Boston Garden, in front of 15,320, who watched in shock this most unexpected 120-106 upset of upsets.

The Sixers, whose past is strewn with broken hearts and dreams, beat the Boston Celtics and took home the Eastern Conference title.

"This," screamed Caldwell Jones in the cramped Boston Garden locker room, is the all-time best, the all-time best. "

Who could argue?

This was supposed to be a repeat of Death in the Afternoon.

Instead, it was Deliverance, with second-year guard Andrew Toney scoring 34 points to lead the Sixers into the Championship Series against the Los Angeles Lakers, starting Thursday night at the Spectrum.

"The coaches and the 12 men all knew we had a good chance to win," Toney said, "and we did. I knew that we had to come out and play an aggressive game, and we did. "

Toney, who had all but disappeared in the Sixers' 88-75 collapse in Game 6 at the Spectrum Friday night, came out of the blocks as strong as ever, hitting his jumper through double-teams and triple-teams, eventually forcing Boston coach Bill Fitch to insert forward Larry Bird into the Celtics backcourt in a vain attempt to occupy him defensively.

But it didn't work. Nothing did.

Toney, in the third quarter, hit a crucial shot from the right wing to stem a Celtics rush, then hit for at least three more crucial baskets in the runaway fourth, when the Sixers ran up a lead that at one time hit 17 points.

Yet Toney, for all the magnificence of his offensive showing, wasn't the only story in this victory.

Julius Erving, who began the game by missing his first three shots and who finished the first half with only nine points, shot the lights out in the second half, getting 20 of his final 29 as the Sixers began to pull away from the defending NBA champions.

"You can't feel better," proclaimed a delirious general manager Pat Williams. "It's overwhelming. There's nothing that's ever been quite like this. We won our way back into our city's hearts with this one. We've been searching for seven years to do that. We can, indeed, win a big one. And up here, there's not a soul in America outside the guys on this team who thought we could do it. "

The Celtics played from behind for nearly the entire game, and, as a result, had to scramble and gamble in the second half instead of playing with the kind of cool calculation that had won them Games 1, 5 and 6.

Bird, for instance, was bothered all afternoon by the defense of Bobby Jones and Mike Bantom and came away with only 20 points.

Incredibly, Bird could not get a single fourth-quarter basket, and he missed on 11 of his 18 shots. Like the rest of the Celtics, he also had trouble hitting from the foul line (Boston hit only 26 of 38 from the line, good for a low 68.4 percent).

But if Bird's performance was shaky, then consider what happened to Celtics center Robert Parish.

Playing aginst an inspired Caldwell Jones, Parish hit only 8 of 21 shots from the field and came away with 14 rebounds - well below the kind of game that he can play and had played before in this crazily twisting, changing series.

It started with the Mother's Day Massacre, in which the Celtics trounced the Sixers by 40. Then the Sixers ran off three straight, and then, as they had done last year, the Celtics came back from the brink of extinction to win the next two.

So it all came down to a seventh game at the Garden, just as it had last year, and there were the Sixers, on the verge of being humiliated by Boston again.

After all, in the gilded history of Boston Celtics basketball, only once had an enemy team come to the dangerous Garden and gone away with a victory in a seventh game.

Likewise, the memory of last year's Celtics-Sixers series, which ended at the Garden in a 91-90 Celtics victory, filled the place as the game started yesterday. Several people wearing sheets, labeling themselves "ghosts," strutted in the aisles by the court, serving as a reminder of last year's debacle.

But yesterday afternoon, those ghosts were buried six feet under the old North Station itself.

"I hope you like this," coach Billy Cunningham shouted bitterly to a Philadelphia sportswriter in the waning moments of the game.

"I hope you like this, and everybody else, too. "

Then, in his postgame press conference, which was record-short, Cunningham said exactly four sentences, proclaiming that he was "ecstatic for the 12 guys in there," and that they "stuck together when everybody else had us buried."

Indeed, on the team bus taking the Sixers from their hotel to the Garden, Erving had talked of places to go in Los Angeles - as if he knew that the Celtics did not have a chance.

Only because the Sixers are the Sixers was the Doctor's premonition not taken seriously, even after a first quarter in which Philadelphia jumped on the Celtics right away.

Slowly, with a one-point lead going to three, then five, then back to three, then back to five and six, Philadelphia began to pull away.

Although Erving had offensive problems early, Toney most certainly did not.

His first shot came 2 minutes, 30 seconds into the game, from deep in the left wing.

His second, 3 minutes later, came after he drove from 15 feet out on the right baseline, then lofted a jumper over a sea of outstretched Celtics hands.

His third, a minute after that, came off a fast break begun by C. Jones and Erving.

But his fourth shot of the day was the clincher.

It, more than anything, signaled that Toney was hot and that he might be hot enough to carry the Sixers to their second Eastern Conference title in three years.

The critical shot came as he stood way, way out on the right wing, trying to break out of the defense set up by M. L. Carr. Finally, he juked his way free, accepted a pass from Maurice Cheeks (19 points, 11 assists), and let fly that odd, from-the-eyeballs bullet.

While Toney was in midair, Carr knocked his arm halfway to Gloucester, but the shot was away.

It swished through just as Toney hit the deck on his back.

With the three-point play finished, the Sixers were up by seven points, and the Celtics were on the run.

By the time the quarter ended, the Sixers were up, 30-28, but they had the momentum and, although the Celts came back to tie the score in the second quarter, nothing had changed the character or fabric of the game.

At the half, the Sixers were up, 52-49, and those few fans from Philadelphia in the house must have seen a glimmer of hope.

As if to prove that they would not dash those hopes again, the Sixers opened the second half with six straight points to open a nine-point bulge, 58-49. That rush was highlighted by two Cheeks baskets and a Cheeks fast-break assist to Erving, who stuffed the ball hard, as if the Dr. J in him had waited too many years for an opportunity like this.

Yet, it was Toney, once more, who was the key in the third quarter.

Up by 64-54 with 7:43 left in the period, the Sixers almost let it get away.

The Celtics scored the next eight points, and, suddenly, what had been a 10-point lead one minute was a two-point lead in the next.

The old script said that this was the time for the fold to begin.

But, as Toney said later, If we went into the game thinking we were going to fold, then we shouldn't have even shown up. "

To prove that, Toney stuck a jumper through the net from the right wing.

On the next possession, the Celtics' Danny Ainge threw a terrible pass over Cedric Maxwell's head and out of bounds. Cheeks came back with a pull-up jumper from the top of the circle to extend the Sixers' lead back to six points, 68-62.

Ainge then passed the ball badly again, throwing one over Carr's head along the sideline.

Erving then missed with a shot, but reserve Mike Bantom, a nonentity in the playoffs until yesterday, flew in from the rafters, grabbed the offensive rebound and laid it back in, giving the Sixers an eight-point lead.

Boston's charge had been beaten back. And reflecting on that third quarter, a disappointed Bill Fitch would say after the game that the Celtics just hadn't been equal to the task.

"We've been in a lot of big games," Fitch began in his postgame conference. But then he stopped and said, "I don't believe we passed the ball as fundamentally poorly as we did today. Our passing was atrocious. "

Indeed, in the second half the Celtics turned the ball over 13 times, which led directly to 17 Philadelphia points.

Cheeks sparked the defense, double-teaming anything that moved and coming up with four steals of a team total of 13.

The Sixers entered the fourth quarter with a 12-point lead, 83-71, then burned through the period on Toney's 11 points and by hitting on 14 of 15 from the line.

When the game was 1:40 from history, Toney broke loose alone, took a pass, and walked to the hoop, dunking the ball as nine players watched from the other end.

With that dunk, the score was 110-95.

And with that, the celebration began.

When the game ended, the Sixers burst off the court and into the concourse leading to the locker room, yelling, screaming, laughing and carrying on like college kids.

Erving once compared this team to a jazz ensemble.

Yesterday, cool jazz turned into rock and roll.