Rivalries — The Pulse of Sports
Rivalries are the pulse of sports.
You can reel them off without hesitation. Individual and team rivalries. If we listed them all it would take up all our space.
In the NBA, none matches one that was renewed in this year’s playoffs. It may even be over by the time you read this. But it doesn’t matter.
Just say, Boston-Philly.
Those two have now faced each other 20 times in league history, far more than any other pair.
For the record, there are two playoff matchups in the NHL which have exceeded the 20 by Boston and Philadelphia. The Montreal Canadiens have tangled with the Boston Bruins on 34 occasions,
while the Detroit Red Wings and Toronto Maple Leafs have squared off 23 times. But keep in mind these records go back to 1929 for hockey, the late 40’s for basketball.
Big difference.
Also for the record, it must be noted that the Celtics early rivalry involved the Philadelphia Warriors, who moved to San Francisco.The old Syracuse Nats then switched to Philly and became known as the 76ers, as they are today. So this is about Boston and Philly.
During my formative years, the battles between the Bill Russell-led Celtics and the Wilt Chamberlain-dominate Warriors were legendary.
It started in the 50’s and continued through the late 60’s
Then, when I became a broadcaster, the revival of that matchup turned out to be a pivotal moment in my career.
But first things first.
The Boston Celtics were just another team until they made a trade with the St. Louis Hawks in 1956. It’s a crazy story, but here’s how it went down.
The first pick belonged to the Rochester Royals. The Celtics choice was at number seven. The Celtics traded one of their stars, Ed Macauley, along with a rookie, Cliff Hagan to the Hawks for the 2d pick. There was still the possibility that the Royals would choose Russell.
Now, this is where it gets wild.
The owner of the Celtics, Walter Brown, was also the president of the Ice Capades, the top entertaining skating show of it’s time. Like the circus.
Brown called the owner of the Royals, Lester Harrison, and offered to send the Ice Capades to Rochester for one week if the Royals would pass on Bill Russell. So, the Royals drafted a guard from Duquesne, Sihugo Green. And the Celtics had their man. At least, that’s how the story goes.
Russell changed the landscape of the NBA for almost 15 years. The Celtics became a perennial power, and with a deep team of brilliant role-playing stars,
captured 11 NBA championships in 13 years.
As we’ve discussed before, there is always someone out there lurking, who comes aboard and is bigger and better than the last “greatest” player.
In this case, it was Wilt Chamberlain. “Wilt the Stilt”, as he was known, was a 7-foot 1-inch giant from Philadelphia, who played two years at Kansas, before
joining the Harlem Globetrotters for one season. In those days, freshmen were ineligible, so Chamberlain played at Kansas in his sophomore and junior campaigns.
While Russell was part of a back-to-back NCAA title team at the University of San Francisco, Chamberlain’s Kansas team lost to North Carolina in three overtimes in the 1957 championship game. Wilt wanted to play in the NBA before finishing his senior year, but during that time, the NBA did not accept players until after their graduating class was finished. In a way, Chamberlain was perhaps the first one-and-done ( in his case two-and-done) college basketball player in history.
The NBA had a practice of establishing “territorial” draft choices so that players from a 50-mile radius from the home arena of a team could be drafted by that team in exchange for their first choice. The idea, of course, was to help teams acquire popular players who had strong local support. Wilt was from Philadelphia, so the Warriors had their man.
The Great Rivalry of the NBA became Russell vs. Wilt. Russell only played for the Celtics. Chamberlain played for the Warriors and the Lakers.
For ten seasons, they battled each other, giving no ground.
Wilt had the edge in scoring and rebounding.
How about this!
In the 1961-62 season, Chamberlain averaged 50.4 points and 25.7 rebounds.
Enough said. Statistically there was really no contest. Wilt even scored 100 points in a game. But not against the Celtics.
Russell was not a scoring machine, and never had the numbers. Except that the Boston great was a brilliant shot-blocker and defensive star at his position as the game has ever seen. The only stat that mattered to Bill Russell was the number of world championships won. Russell had 11. Wilt captured 2.
Boston and Philly battled seven times in 11 years, with the Celtics winning six of those series. The exception was in 1967, when the 76ers ran away with the NBA crown. Led by Wilt, whose nicknames included the “Big Dipper”, the Sixers won, what was then, a record 68 games. They vanquished the Celtics in five games and beat the San Francisco Warriors in six.
Growing up, there was nothing better in pro basketball than a game between Boston and Philadelphia, and the titanic wars between the two great centers of their time, William Felton Russell, and Wilton Norman Chamberlain.
There was an eight year hiatus before the two clubs would tangle again in the playoffs. This time, it was the 76ers who had the dominant star first. His name was Julius Erving. Doctor J was, at that time, the most exciting player in the league. He was an acrobatic marvel as a 6-5 forward, and the Sixers beat the Celtics in 7. Boston had it’s stars, to be sure. Dave Cowens, John Havlicek and JoJo White were big-time performers, but nothing like what was to arrive in Boston.
You all know of Larry Bird.
Red Auerbach was a legendary coach, then president of the Celtics. It was Auerbach who really engineered the deal to get Bill Russell to the Celts in the 50’s. And it was Auerbach who had the foresight to draft Bird as a junior, knowing he would play his final season at Indiana State. In the coming years, the rivalry between Larry Bird and Julius Erving became a true revival of the Russell-Chamberlain era. Only this time, it was not about the center position, but the forwards, who roamed the court and shot the ball in spectacular fashion.
This is where my good fortune occurred.
The CBS Sports Spectacular was our version of ABC’s Wide World of Sports. An anthology series focusing on the so-called “minor” sports, appealing
to the non hard-core viewer. I was the host of Sports Spectacular, which featured among the following: the world roller-skating championships from Germany, the world team-surfing championships from Honolulu, the world kick-boxing championships from Thailand, and sumo wrestling from Tokyo.
You get the idea.
Our show was neither sports, nor spectacular. ABC had all the major ice skating, gymnastics and other legitimate championships locked up, so
our Executive Producer, the late TV entrepreneur, Eddie Einhorn did a valiant, and truly unbelievable job in creating programming for the series.
It didn’t last long, and following a brief dry spell, came my big break.
For the 1980-81 season I served as the backup NBA play-by-play broadcaster. My partner was former player and coach Kevin Loughery, a wonderful partner. The lead announce team was led by Gary Bender, alongside analysts Bill Russell and Rick Barry. Two hall-of-famers.
For the Conference Finals, for some reason that is still hard to fathom, Kevin and I were assigned the Celtics-76ers series, while the lead team handled the West finals between the Houston Rockets and the Kansas City-Omaha Kings.
Those three were to go on to broadcast the NBA Finals. They were our No. 1 group, without question. Why they weren’t assigned to the marquee matchup between the two long-time rivals is unexplainable.
The Celtics and Sixers staged a series that in my view is the best I’ve ever covered. Yes, even better than the highly-touted Celtics-Lakers Finals I broadcast in my nine years as lead announcer for the NBA on CBS.
It was Bird against Doctor J. It was the Boston-Philly rivalry re-energized.
There were scuffles, fights, hard-feelings, and the ultimate in intensity.
The 76ers took a 3-1 lead including victories by only one and two points.
Then the Celtcs rallied, coming back from that 3-1 deficit to win three straight to capture the Eastern finals.
Here were the scores of those last three games: Celtics 111-109, Celtics 100-98, Celtics 91-90, on Bird’s jumper with under a minute to play.
The series is still considered by many, the greatest ever. I’m not sure of that. But for this reporter it certainly was.
The next year, CBS acquired the rights to the NCAA tournament, and I believe being at courtside for the ’81 battle catapulted me into the lead chair for what
turned out to be a glorious era of NBA basketball for the next nine years.
So now it’s reached full circle. Boston and Philly, after a six-year absence, went at it again. Despite playing without several of its top performers, including Kyrie Irving, the Celtics have taken advantage of the youth and inexperience of the 76ers, who are back in the post-season after six years.
You can see how green this team is. Veteran Al Horford took advantage of young Joel Embiid in Game 3. Turnovers have crushed the hopes of the Sixers in two of their losses. But make no mistake, both of these young teams will be heard from in the next few years, at least.
Yes, Boston-Philly in the NBA somehow always returns.
Why not?
It’s the league’s biggest rivalry.
Always has, always will be.
________________________________________________________________
Enjoy Dick’s FREE podcast, “Stockton!” where he shares a different perspective on the world of sports along with stories that he has collected from his unique front-row seat.
Download for FREE at the iTunes store http://apple.co/2lwjg8F
