Jack McCallum - Unfinished Business: On and Off the Court With the 1990-91 Boston Celtics

M AY 17, 1991

Like a congregation of lost souls, various members of the Boston Celtics hierarchy drifted aimlessly outside the visiting team locker room in the cavernous Palace of Auburn Hills, the suburban home of the defending NBA champion Detroit Pistons. A long, exceptionally difficult, and ultimately ambivalent Celtics season had ended a half hour earlier with a heartbreaking 117-113 overtime loss to the Pistons in Game 6 of the Eastern Conference semifinal playoffs, and now there was so much to say and no way to say it.

Alan Cohen, the team owner most intimately involved with basketball matters, looked like he was sucking on a lemon. An offensive goaltending call on the Celtics Kevin McHale made by referee Jack Maddenlater revealed through instant replay to be clearly incorrecthad quite possibly cost the Celtics the game; Cohen, who earlier in the season had been fined by the league for criticizing referees after a defeat, was trying, and not succeeding, to get Jack Madden out of his mind. Cohens partner, Don Gaston, an easygoing fellow who bears an uncanny, and sometimes unfortunate, resemblance to slapstick-comedian Benny Hill, brought his wife, Paula, a diet Pepsi from the locker room. Its a kind of private ceremony they share when they travel on the road together, but this time it was steeped in gloom.

Chris Ford tried to smile from time to time but just couldnt get the corners of his mouth to move upward very well. The rookie head coach had taken his club further than most preseason prognosticators thought he would, but now, as the Pistons celebrated down the hall and the Celtics packed their bags for the last time, that was little consolation. Fords assistants, Don Casey and Jon Jennings, looked dazed and confused. Generally, they are the ones supplying the behind-the-scenes interpretation of the game to reporters and fans, but now they had very little to say. The playoffs were a new experience for both Casey, who had labored for eight years in the NBA with remarkably unsuccessful teams, and Jennings, a rookie coach. Later Jennings remarked how empty he felt inside.

One can only imagine what club president Red Auerbach was doing in the sitting room of his home in Washington, D.C. Auerbach hardly ever travels to away games anymore, but he viewed this ulcerous pageant live on Ted Turners superstation, TNT, complete with endless replays of the maddening Madden mistake. It was safe to reach two conclusions about Arnold Auerbach in those terrible moments right after the game: he was smoking a cigar, and he was cursing the absolute living hell out of Jack Madden.

Dave Gavitt, who was in his first year as senior executive vice president of the Celtics, a position created for him right below Auerbach, looked ambassadorial, even in this, the worst of times. He always does. Gavitt whispered words of shared condolence to Ford and his assistants, exchanged sympathetic pats and handshakes with the owners, nodded and smiled and stayed away from Boston reporters, who already had questions about postseason matters. After a few moments Gavitt headed to the Piston locker room to congratulate Detroit coach Chuck Daly and general manager Jack McCloskey. That is the correct thing to do, though Auerbach never did it. The opposition always came to Auerbach; Auerbach did not go to the opposition. In the past, Gavitt and Daly had shared a weekend of golf in North Carolina, an annual event that brings together the creme de la creme of the basketball world, people like legendary North Carolina University coach Dean Smith and superstar Michael Jordan. That was the company that Dave Gavitt kept.

Inside the Celtics locker room, there was a sense of of what? It wasnt anger. It wasnt gloom exactly. And we can safely eliminate joy. It was the emptiness that Jennings was feeling, the experience of losing a game that had been all but won having anesthetized everyone to emotion. Still, there had to be a small sense of relief within each player. The year had been a long, long roller-coaster ride of dizzying highs and stomach-turning lows. For the first three months of the season the Celtics were as good as any team in the league. Then Larry Birds back turned cranky and they treaded water for a while. Then Bird came back and they were good again. Then Bird went out and they were downright bad. Then Bird came back on kind of a part-time basis, and they were kind of a part-time team, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes mediocre. Along the way, McHale, Reggie Lewis, and Robert Parish had, like Bird, played bravely through pain. It was just no way to go through a season.

A year earlier the Celtics had bowed out in a much more disappointing, and embarrassing, fashion in a Game 5 first-round playoff loss to the New York Knicks at Boston Garden. It was one of the more ignominious defeats in the history of this proud franchise, and no one would compare that to the effort extended on this spring evening at The Palace. Yet the more things change, the more they remain the same. The questions that were asked after the loss to the Knicks were now, one year later, being pondered again. A professional team, particularly one in the spotlight like the Celtics, does not really have an offseason, you see. The endless continuum that is sports demands that the next season begins as soon as the curtain descends on the season before. What changes will be made? Who will be there next year? What has to be done to move you closer to a championship?

At the center of these questions were, predictably, the Celtics veteran Big Three: Bird, McHale, and Parish. They had been mentioned so often together during the season, usually to compare and contrast them with The Kids (Brian Shaw, Reggie Lewis, Dee Brown, and Kevin Gamble), that they now went by one long name: LarryKevinandRobert. Thats how they were known, and almost always in that order. LarryKevinandRobert. Last year it was widely assumed that Auerbach and the owners had to trade one of them while their value was still high in order to get a fresh and invigorated team that could challenge for the championship. Over my dead body, was Auerbachs basic response, and his faith in the Big Three proved to be justified. Each had an excellent season, and, in fact, on more than a few winter evenings, each was as good as any of his NBA counterpartsBird as the do-everything forward, McHale as the prolific off-the-bench scorer, Parish as the indomitable presence in the pivot. But still, no matter how much one praised their valor, the fact remained that by the end of the season they were broken down. All of them.

Parish, the NBAs oldest player at thirty-seven, had been the healthiest of the Big Three through the season, but, ironically, a badly sprained ankle had forced him to miss the final game against Detroit. Dressed impeccably (as usual) in a gray suit, he had nothing to say to the press and was quietly talking to friends near the Celtics team bus.