Never Doubt the Heart of a Champion

With Game 5 of the 1968 Finals tied at 108 and three seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, the ball found its way into the hands of Los Angeles Lakers forward Elgin Baylor, and he was the guy L.A wanted with the ball in his hands to win the game. But he was in the wrong place to do it: at the Boston Garden, where L.A's championship hopes often went to die.

The Lakers had been agonizingly close to Finals glory before on the Celtics' home floor, pushing Boston to seven games in two of their five previous Finals meetings. In Game 7 of the 1962 Finals, with the score tied at 100, Celtics great Bob Cousy lost track of Lakers shooting guard Frank Selvy on an inbounds pass. "Hot" Rod Hundley found Selvey alone in the left corner and no Celtic within five feet of him.

Great shooters rarely find themselves that wide open and Selvey, who had once scored 100 points in a game in college, was one of the greatest of them all. The grainy, standard-definition color footage on YouTube shows Cousy making a late lunge at Selvy as he released the potential miscalculation with the shot, the ball hit the rim and bounced into Bill Russell's hands. The game went to overtime, where the Lakers lost in heartbreaking fashion.

“That shot,” Russell told the Boston Globe after the game, “was the kind you hoped for.”

As we leave Baylor’s shot in the air for a moment, you need to understand how the NBA arrived at this point—the Celtics and Lakers playing one another in their sixth Finals in 10 years. Because unlike their previous Finals battles, the 1968 clash was not pre-ordained as the prior five meetings seemed to be.

The Celtics dominated the NBA like no other franchise has done in any team sport, before or since. Beginning with Russell’s arrival in 1956, the Celtics won 70.6 percent of their regular-season games, finished first in the Eastern Division for nine consecutive seasons, and second for the next three. During that that span, they won nine NBA titles in 11 years, including eight consecutive championships from 1959 to 1966. Also in that span, Russell’s defensive genius would also earn him five NBA MVP Awards, an honor that, at the time, was determined by a vote of the League’s players. And let’s not forget Finals MVP awards—which Russell has zero, but only because the award didn’t exist until Russell’s final year in 1969—but suffice to say he would’ve had a few on his mantel since the trophy awarded to the Finals’ most pivotal performer was named after him in 2005.

“The impact [Russell] had on the team, with the players who were there, was significant in the sense that for the first time there was a player from a defensive standpoint who changed the way the game was looked at,” says Jerry West.

In 1966, the Lakers had fought back from a 3-1 series deficit to force a Game 7 at Boston Garden. L.A. rallied from 10 points down in the final 45 seconds of that game, cutting the lead to two with three seconds to go, before the Celtics, yet again, triumphed over their rivals, 95-93. In 1959, ’62, ’63, ’65 and ’66, the Finals’ story had the same ending: The Boston Celtics win, the Lakers lose.

Yet here was Baylor late in Game 5 in 1968—a crazy back-andforth affair in which the Celtics led by 19 points in the first half and by 18 in the second half—with a chance to win the game. It was a miracle the Lakers even had an opportunity to grab a 3-2 series lead for the first time since that epic 1962 Finals. Add to that the Lakers got their final chance to win thanks to a turnover committed by Russell, the longtime ringleader of their heartache, and stealing this one at the Garden would be extra sweet.

Baylor got the ball at midcourt but didn’t have time to drive to the hoop. Instead, he flung a shot from 25 feet, on the same side of the court from which Selvy had come up short on his jumper in the ‘62 series.

Baylor was named the NBA Rookie of the Year in 1959 and carried a 33-39 Minneapolis Lakers team to the Finals, where the Celtics—who else?—promptly dispensed of them in the first Finals sweep. In 1960, the Lakers headed to the West Coast, and that same season, they got West, who arrived in L.A. from West Virginia. He and Baylor gave the Lakers the two best players in the Western Division. Together, they won the Western Division four times in five years between 1962 and 1966—where they invariably met their nemesis. Celtics vs. Lakers in the Finals? Pencil it in. Hell, forget the pencil. You could chisel it onto stone.

But by 1968, pro basketball was in the middle of radical changes on and off the court.

The Celtics, with their fastbreak offense, a center who defended the hoop not from below but from above it, and, at one point, an all-African-American starting five, were often at the forefront this change. And there was no more revolutionary act than Red Auerbach. After winning his eighth consecutive NBA title as coach in 1966, stepped aside from coaching (but continued as GM) and named Russell the first African-American coach (as player-coach) in a major professional sports league. In his first season at the helm, Russell’s Celtics were good,

“[Bill Russell] combined every element that you would love to have on a team, but more importantly, the players who played with him knew how special he was. He brought a different perspective in many ways, and he brought a completely different change in the game of basketball in that period of the NBA’s history because he was so dominant defensively. —Jerry West

winning 60 games in an NBA that had expanded to 10 teams in 1966-67. They couldn’t, however, match their rivals from Philadelphia. In 1966-67, the Sixers destroyed all challengers, raced to a then-record 68 wins, starting 46-4. Exorcising demons that dated back to the days of the Philadelphia Warriors, the Sixers destroyed the Celtics in the Eastern Division Finals in five games, including a 140-116 pasting in Game 5. Philly fans’ chant of “Boston’s dead! Boston’s dead!” reverberated through Philadelphia’s venerable Convention Hall—and throughout the NBA.

And if anyone doubted the greatness of Philadelphia’s 79-17 overall record, Sixers coach Alex Hannum tried to set the record straight.

“This is the greatest team ever assembled,” said Hannum after the Sixers’ triumph.

The Sixers—who returned every player from their title team with the exception of forward Dave Gambee, whom they lost to the San Diego Rockets in the expansion draft—looked primed to repeat the following season. Once again, they finished first in the East in the regular season with 62 wins, eight games ahead of the Celtics.

When the NBA expanded for the 1966-67 season, it adopted a new playoff seeding setup. According to the The New York Times from November of 1966, the NBA planned to seed the postseason with the top seed facing the No. 3 seed and No. 2 taking on the fourth seed. Thus, the Celtics and Lakers, who also finished second in their division, faced an easier road in the postseason.

In 1968, instead of meeting the 29-53 Chicago Bulls, the West Division regular-season champion St. Louis Hawks drew the 43-39 San Francisco Warriors. The Warriors stunned the

Hawks, winning their semifinals series in six games, while the Lakers breezed past the Bulls in five games, setting up a Western Division Finals meeting with the Warriors, the team that swept them out of the playoffs in 1967.

In the East, the No. 2 seeded—and aging—Celtics got the 40-42 Pistons in their opening-round series, instead of the up-and-coming Knicks. Philly’s reward for finishing first was to face New York. And that’s when the mighty Sixers’ season started to unravel.

Billy Cunningham, who had provided instant offense for the Sixers all season, averaging 18.9 points in just 28 minutes per game, broke his right wrist in Game 3 against the Knicks and would miss the rest of the postseason. The Sixers would grind their way to a series win, but it took six games. Waiting in the Eastern Division Finals were the Celtics—a team the Sixers thought they had vanquished the previous season.

But as the Division Finals were about to start, tragedy struck. On April 4, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as he stood on a balcony at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn. Celtics center Wayne Embry, who would go on to a Hall of Fame career as an NBA executive and is currently a senior adviser to the Toronto Raptors, remembers trying to reconcile Dr. King’s death and having to play a game the next day.

“None of us wanted to play,” Embry recalls now. “It was a horrible, horrific thing, for all that Dr. King meant for civil rights and bringing [social change] along in this country.

“There was anger. There were a lot of different emotions that came into play. But after the [NBA] commissioner and mayors of the cities came together, they thought it was best that we did play because it would keep people off the streets and keep their

interest in the game, and that it would be the wise thing to do. So that’s why we came together and played.”

Embry and his Celtics teammates were able to regroup enough to stun the Sixers, 127-118, in Philly in Game 1. The NBA decided to push Game 2 of both the Eastern and Western Division Finals to April 10, the day after Dr. King’s funeral in Atlanta, which Chamberlain and Russell both attended.

The extra days seemed to give the Sixers the time they needed to get back on track, as they won Game 2 in Boston, Game 3 in Philly and Game 4 in Boston to take a 3-1 series lead. In three games, the Sixers had restored order and Boston was staring at consecutive, five-game series defeats in the East Division Finals. In order to make its 11th Finals in 12 years, the Celtics would need to make history once again. They also needed a little inspiration. And they got it, thanks to a wisecracking journalist. “I remember this vividly,” Embry says. “We walked off the practice court in Boston, with the next game in Philly, and one of the old sportswriters in Boston says, loud enough for us to hear as we were walking off, ‘This is the last day we’re going to need this court. We can pack it up and get it ready for hockey. We won’t need this floor anymore.’

“We go into the locker room, and [John] Havlicek and I write ‘PRIDE’ on the board in big letters, and we put little bitty dollar signs beneath that. That may not have been the turning point, but I think it did have an effect, in that we thought pride was going to prevail. “And it did.” With Sam Jones and Havlicek pouring in the points, and Russell controlling the boards, the Celtics easily won the next two games to force a Game 7 in Philadelphia’s brand-new arena,

The Spectrum. Russell the player had been terrific in the series. Now, with a trip to the Finals on the line, Russell the coach was going to show his stuff.

“Before Game 7 in Philly, he comes to me and says, ‘Wayne, you’re going to play a lot in this game because I know you can guard Wilt,” Embry says. “And I’m going to guard Chet Walker. Chet Walker has never had someone like me guard him.’

“That was a stroke of genius. If he could contain Chet, he had confidence that I could contain Wilt because of my strength. I thought it was a great coaching decision.”

I thought there would be champagne and all that in the locker room after the game. No champagne. I asked why, and they said, ‘Well, it’s just another game for us. Another year. Another championship.’ —Wayne Embry

Russell, who played all 48 minutes, hounded Walker into an 8-for-22 shooting performance. Chamberlain had 34 rebounds, but only 14 points, as the Celtics topped the Sixers, 100-96, in Game 7. Ever the NBA pioneers, the Celtics became the first team in League history to win a series when trailing three games to one.

“At this point,” Russell told the Boston Globe after the stunning comeback, “it is my most satisfying victory.”

In the West, with the No. 1 seeded Hawks out of the way, the No. 2 seeded Lakers, who had West and Baylor, got revenge for being swept out of the 1967 playoffs by barely breaking a sweat in sweeping San Francisco. For the first time in their illustrious, intertwined histories, the Celtics and Lakers met in the Finals after neither finished first in their respective divisions. It was also the first time in 16 seasons that the top seeds in each division failed to make the Finals.

In his book, Hang Time: My Life in Basketball Baylor didn’t shed any tears over the Celtics’ upset of the Sixers.

“I’m not heartbroken that we will be facing the Celtics instead of the younger Sixers. The Celtics have added veterans Bailey Howell and Don Nelson, Bill turned 33 [actually 34] earlier this year, Sam Jones must be at least our age, and Havlicek is no kid. Bunch of old guys,” Baylor wrote. “They have to be worn out after that Philadelphia series. Overall, we’re younger, quicker, and motivated. We’ll beat them this time, our sixth Finals appearance against the Boston Celtics. Sixth time is the charm. Has to be.”

And maybe it would be. After four games, the series was tied, with each team winning a game on the other’s home court. And 47:57 into Game 5 at Boston Garden, the game was tied. Russell had double-dribbled, giving the ball to the Lakers with three seconds remaining in the fourth quarter.

“You do everything you can to guard it, but it was Elgin,” Embry says. “He was one of the true great ones. And when that shot left his hand, it looked like it was going in.”

It didn’t, because in the ’60s good things never happened to the Lakers in Boston Garden. Russell grabbed the rebound, and Game 5 headed into overtime. After the game, Baylor wished Russell had made his mistake a few seconds earlier.

“I didn’t have time to drive,” Baylor said. “Five or six seconds, yes. They let me take the shot as I saw Russell fall back.”

The Celtics were able to draw from their seemingly bottomless well of talent and good fortune in overtime thanks to a Lakers’ castoff. Nelson, who was released by Los Angeles after the 1965 season, scored a career-high 26 points, including four in overtime. To further underscore how intertwined these franchises had become, a former Celtic played a huge role for the Lakers. Mel Counts, who was traded by the Celtics after the 1966 season, poured in a playoff-best 20 points and frustrated Russell all night.

“You know, it’s funny,” Russell told the Boston Globe. “We let Counts go and Los Angeles let Nelson go. And look at the nights they had.”

But when a key play needed to be made, the Celtics’ biggest star came through. After nearly giving the game away in regulation, Russell made the play of the game against—who else?—Baylor. The Celtics led 119-117 with 38 seconds remaining and Baylor got Nelson in the post. As Baylor let the ball go, Russell came flying in over Nelson’s shoulder and blocked Baylor’s shot. Nelson corralled the ball and was fouled. He made one of two free throws to give the Celtics a 120-117 lead. The Lakers had two shots in the waning moments, but couldn’t convert. Again, the Lakers missed a golden opportunity to steal one in Boston, and were headed back to L.A. down three games to two.

To everyone but the Lakers at the Boston Garden, Russell’s block was another brilliant defensive play in a lifetime of them. But to Russell the coach, it was foolhardy.

“My play was actually a bad one,” Russell said. “I came off the weak side and let Mel Counts go free. I really shouldn’t have done that because Counts was shooting me out of the gym already. But I did it and it worked.”

Things always seemed to work for the Celtics. Game 6 was in L.A. and, no matter the outcome, the Celtics would return to Boston after the game. They could return with the title or they could have the Lakers join them on the cross-country trip for a Game 7 in Boston Garden. From the start, it was clear that the Celtics wanted no part of a potential Game 7, as they took a 70-50 lead into the half of Game 6. Boston would win going away, 124-109.

Havlicek scored 40, Bailey Howell added 30 and Russell grabbed 19 boards. The Celtics had won their 10th title in 12

years and sixth against the Lakers dating back to 1959. It was only the third time the Celtics had captured an NBA title on the road. Havlicek played 291 of a possible 293 minutes and averaged 27.3 points, 8.7 rebounds and 6.7 assists for the series. Russell played 292 minutes and grabbed 21.8 boards per game. He added 17.3 points and 5.7 assists per game for good measure. Embry noted that the victory over the Lakers was sort of an anti-climax after the historic comeback against the Sixers in the Eastern Division Finals. Yet, for Embry, who had planned to retire after the 1966 season but was coaxed out of a good job with Pepsi Cola by Russell and Auerbach, this was his first title in his 10 NBA seasons, and he figured that a proper celebration was in order.

“I thought there would be champagne and all that in the locker room after the game,” Embry says, laughing at the recollection. “No Champagne. I asked why, and they said, ‘Well, it’s just another game for us. Another year. Another championship.’ “They weren’t as celebratory as I was.” Embry was able to get his bubbly later that night at the hotel, but Boston’s 10th title was seen as business as usual not only then, but years later as well. In his book Red and Me: My Coach, My Lifelong Friend, Russell gives only a passing mention to the history he and the Celtics made.

“In 1968, my second season as player-coach, we won another championship. It was especially exhilarating because I had fulfilled my last basketball agenda: winning a title as a coach. One was enough, so I decided to retire. But when an important personal matter intervened, I changed my mind, for just one year. I kept this to myself but I knew, going in, that 1969 would be my last year in basketball.”

And while time has fogged the details of some of those involved in a series 50 years ago, it may also be hard for NBA fans today to imagine the impact Russell had on the NBA as a player and as a coach. But for West, Russell’s greatness endures.

“He combined every element that you would love to have on a team, but more importantly, the players who played with him knew how special he was,” says West. “He brought a different perspective in many ways, and he brought a completely different change in the game of basketball in that period of the NBA’s history because he was so dominant defensively.

“He was given a great gift and he used it.”

By Rob Peterson