A 16th Flag in Sight

By Tom Callahan

Montreal's Canadiens and New York's Yankees have some cause to feel proprietary about ice hockey and baseball, but what other town or team ever possessed a sport the way Boston and the Celtics hold professional basketball? This week or next, the National Basketball Association is certain to conclude its 17th consecutive season without a repeat winner, and, absent Bill Russell at the center position, no team has doubled since 1954. So why, all these years and only four titles since Russell's retirement, does it seem Boston always is, ever was and forever will be the champion?

Even when the Celtics lose, as they happened to last year against the Los Angeles Lakers, somehow they are able to retrieve their pre-eminence in the next instant. Like Larry Bird at the base line whistling a country tune, they steal it right back. Worn down from having to play catch-up since about last October, the mere-champion Lakers appeared to give in this spring to something larger than the Houston Rockets, maybe to those twin towers, history and Red Auerbach, gently influenced by the knowledge of how hot it can get in Boston Garden as May turns to June.

The Rockets arrived at the finals last week completely innocent of this dread. "I'm not from around here," explained Akeem Olajuwon beautifully, in a grainy voice as resonant as Belafonte's. Almost everything about the young center and gazelle Olajuwon, 23, is beautiful ("There's some zebra in him too," insists ex-Celtic Cedric Maxwell). Not far removed from the soccer plains of Lagos, Nigeria, Olajuwon on occasion is inclined during warm-up drills to kick the basketball smartly back to the shooter. Because he was unaware of the Boston Celtics before 1980--and of the sport prior to 1978 --Akeem is unawed by those 15 championship banners floating high above the parquet majesty of this celebrated American cathedral that he respectfully calls a "dump."

As Kareem (Abdul-Jabbar) dissolves more and more into Akeem, and new-and- improved human beings like Chicago's Michael Jordan and Atlanta's Dominique Wilkins burst in full flight on the N.B.A., both Bird's stature and the wonder of it have increased. As preposterous as it is to think that the world's best basketball player could be a white man with a blue collar, the consensus is approaching unanimity. Last week Bird, 29, became the third player and the first non-center to be designated "most valuable" for three years running (after Russell and Wilt Chamberlain), and his reaction was first to predict he will win some more and then to put on a display of shooting and passing, thinking and thrilling that stretched a clear 112-100 Boston victory in the first game to a thumping 117-95 one in Game 2.

Often underestimated Celtics Coach K.C. Jones, the sidekick guard who accompanied Russell to eleven college, Olympic and pro parades, likes to tick off the essential reasons he considers Bird the "best total player" ever. "Attitude. Determination. Understanding. Hustle. He's also got some talent." So much of it, according to Supersub Bill Walton, 33, that teammates have to combat a powerful impulse just to stand and gawk. A sizable but unsturdy slab of alabaster, Walton was once breathtakingly Bird-like. Now he is the handiest extra man on an exceedingly deep team that chanced to lose just one home game this interminable season. Bostonians are poised to measure Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, Dennis Johnson, Danny Ainge and company against any club of memory or mythology, from Chamberlain's Philadelphia 76ers and Willis Reed's New York Knicks, to the Bob Cousy, Frank Ramsey and Sam Jones Celtics of more than two decades back.

The town has Bird's word that this year's edition would have beaten the '84 and '81 champions. "Definitely, they would have taken our '74 and '76 teams," adds John Havlicek, the retired god. "They're much better. But the '60s teams--they'd have to play them." For that matter, the Celtics still have to play the Rockets, though with two to five games left in the tournament, Coach Bill Fitch was already invoking General Custer, and 7-ft. 4- in. Ralph Sampson, who caught an elbow instead of a break, had a seam of sorrowful stitches sewn along one cheek. "It's been so long since our team has had the bottom drop out," said Fitch. "The best basketball doesn't always come after you've been embarrassed like that." In the sweltering state of the old Garden, he need not have mentioned that "our running game disappeared."

Three middle stops in Houston represent an oasis all right, but having coached the Celtics to a championship four years ago, Fitch had a special * perspective on both teams and seemed to be finding scant comfort in so much local knowledge. "When that little picture machine of his goes off," he said of Bird, "he's in a world of his own. (Fitch used to like to call Bird "Kodak.") That little voice starts talking to him. He's in his backyard again. He's playing by himself." The image delighted Fitch, but only for a moment. "I don't know," he sighed, unable to blame Defender Rodney McCray for Bird's three-point plays inside and out. "What can anyone do with Larry?" What would Havlicek do? John Hondo answered confidently, "Let him get 50 points and make the other guys get six or eight."

And what would Bird do? "I don't give out my secrets," he said. "I've worked too many hard years on my game to give my secrets away." Bird will say that, when teams decline to double-team him, he mourns those lush opportunities to pass. "I love it when I'm double-teamed." Familiar with triple-teams, Olajuwon said, "Bird works out everything in his mind beforehand, but I can't do anything except react to the situation. I never practice my moves because, when the time comes to do them, there isn't time to think of them. They just come." So there are at least two styles of genius.