With the Walter A. Brown trophy held firmly in his grasp, the rookie smiled and exclaimed to all within earshot. "They've been trying to get me to carry stuff all year long”, he noted, referring to the typical hazing of first-year players. “This I'll carry."
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Before that season, thirty years ago this fall, Kevin McHale hadn’t exactly ingratiated himself to his teammates and management. He said the right things, to be sure, but it was his holdout – and subsequent threats to play in Italy – that got things off on the wrong foot. McHale’s holdout was just one twist in a breathtaking sequence of events for the Celtics, all of which transpired in the month before the ‘80-‘81 season. To put it in perspective: the current Celtics preseason roster sports four Hall of Fame locks (Paul, Shaq, KG, and Ray); back in Fall 1980, the C’s had a revolving roster that, at one point or another, contained six players who made it to the Hall. But they never made it to the parquet (or any) floor together and some of the anecdotes surrounding their entrances and exits are amusing, bizarre, or some combination of the two.
McHale, of course, was acquired by The Trade in June 1980. After years of disastrous seasons in the late 70’s, followed by the resurgence of the Celtics in Bird’s rookie year, Auerbach traded the number one overall pick (which they used on Joe Barry Carroll) to Golden State for Robert Parish and the number three pick, which they used to pick. (The lesser known part of that trade: Auerbach flat-out hoodwinked Dick Vitale to get the pick that became the #1 overall pick. Auerbach signed M.L. Carr as a free agent from the Pistons, back when teams were given compensation for the players they lost. Knowing he was going to owe the Pistons for the signing, Red offered to sweeten the deal, adding Bob McAdoo to Detroit in exchange for two first-round picks. Not only were there picks, but trading McAdoo freed up playing time for a young Cedric Maxwell.) At the outset of camp, three months later, McHale remained unsigned. On September 13th, a day after veterans reported to camp, Kevin was in Milan and his agent said there was a 90% chance that he would sign to play overseas. Was this move a negotiating ploy? Almost certainly, but the Celtics drew a hard line of their own. On the subject of McHale, Coach Bill Fitch had taken his own verbal jabs. “I was watching the tape of the NIT finals when Virginia whipped Minnesota, and it's very nice to be able to compare good and bad films. Based on that, I'd say that McHale could use this rookie camp.” Fitch, the hard-driving ex-Marine, derisively referred to McHale as the “Spaghetti Man” in his absence. On the same topic, Auerbach would say, “McHale is a fine player. But I’m not going to prostitute the ballclub to get him.”
McHale was part of an astonishingly deep frontline. In addition to the original Big Three, the C’s had the previous year’s starters, Dave Cowens and Cedric Maxwell, as well as Rick Robey, M.L. Carr, and Eric Fernsten. Conversely, Fitch said that he was thinking of starting the season with three guards – not for a three-guard lineup, but for the entire roster! Presumably, Fitch knew that M.L. Carr could serve as an occasional backcourt player and that point guard Tiny Archibald, who was holding out, might eventually return to the fold.
The left-handed Archibald had been brilliant in the ’79-80 season, scoring 14.1 points and 8.4 assists per game. He had earned $413,000 the previous year, but money was not the issue for the free agent. According to Red, “The length and the structure of Tiny's contract is the problem.” Archibald wanted a contract of at least two years; the Celtics offered a one-year deal. As a native New Yorker, Tiny had previously played summer ball on the outdoor courts of the Rucker League, but as a veteran free agent, he wisely eschewed the asphalt to play indoors. Instead, he played for the Celtics, the Bronx Celtics, in the New York Pro Summer League. His backcourt teammate, fresh off the second of two national championships at Old Dominion University, was Nancy Lieberman. She was originally scheduled to be playing in the Moscow Olympics, but the U.S. boycott kept her stateside. She scored 7 points, to go with 4 rebounds and 7 assists in 16 minutes of action over her first two games. After those two games, she was literally given to another team to increase her playing time since her Bronx teammates also included Earl Monroe and Lloyd Free. Facing the prospects of starting the season without Tiny (or Lieberman, for that matter), the Celtics had a roster which was dangerously thin at point guard. Shooting guards Gerald Henderson and Chris Ford (the starter) were returning, and Pete Maravich was scheduled to be back after a late-season, 26-game stint with the Celtics. Heading to camp, the C’s were going to need to find some guards who could play.
Two veterans attended August’s rookie camp in Marshfield, Massachusetts: M.L. Carr and the reigning rookie of the year, Larry Bird. Fitch ran a structured, disciplined camp, and one experiment was to run a high-post 2-1-2 offense with Bird in the middle surrounded by guards. It was later used successfully in the preseason. 10 of the late-round draftees and free-agents survived the cut and made it to training camp at Helenic College on September 9 and, given the emphasis on finding backcourt talent, not one of them was taller than 6-6. Local talents Ronnie Perry from Holy Cross and Rufus Harris from the University of Maine were two of the guards thought to have a chance at cracking the opening day roster. On September 12, the veterans reported – including Maravich, who a day earlier signed a one-year contract for $200,000. “My big goal is to earn a championship ring and this could be just the year to do it,” Maravich said. With the veterans in camp, the talent level and the intensity elevated. During one practice early in camp, Dave Cowens sidled over to the sideline and muttered, “Too much ability out there.” To make matters worse, he lost a toenail on his big toe and had to sit out for a few days. His potential replacement, Parish, wasn’t awing his new team, either. Looking back a few years later, Bird would say of him, “You didn’t know whether to laugh or feel sorry for the guy. Bill Fitch was busy being ‘Mr. Drill Sergeant’ and the poor fellow had obviously never had to run like this. By the time he’d get to midcourt, he’d be so far behind that he’d have to turn around and go back the other way.” With Cowens ailing, Parish struggling, and McHale in Milan, the promise of a deep front line started to fade away. Perhaps it nudged Auerbach to action. Or perhaps Italy hadn’t sat well with Kevin. In either case, there were signs that their standoff was reaching an end. The GM of McHale’s Italian team said that the chances of him inking McHale were 50/50 at best. Then there was an overseas call from McHale’s agent to Celtic owner Harry Mangurian. Finally, on September 17, McHale flew in from Milan, signed the contract, and joined the night session of the two-a-day camp.
Kevin would soon impress his new teammates, with several mentioning his surprising shot-blocking ability. But there were only a few days between his signing and the initial preseason game. In the final preseason scrimmage – the Green and White Game – McHale and Maravich stepped to the fore. The game pitted the starters (Green) against the bench players (White). Maravich scored 38 points and the led the backups to a win. His scrimmage teammate, Carr, said, “He was on fire. We were going crazy. We just gave him the ball.” Maravich wanted desperately to be a starter. He told friends he wasn’t coming back (for the '80-'81 season) unless he could start. He had trained vigorously in the off-season, lifting weights, running sprints, and bulking up to improve his durability. He had even shed that goofy perm that made him look a little bit like Mark Fidrych. In his memoirs, he wrote, “I couldn’t stop thinking about what might happen if we made it all the way to the playoffs and I had spent the year on the bench in disgrace.” Both Auerbach and assistant coach K.C. Jones took note of his hard work, but his efforts to impress Fitch had no effect. Chris Ford was going to be the starter and Fitch was never going to take a liking to Pistol Pete’s game. Pete’s frustration gradually simmered to a slow boil. Once during a drill, M.L. Carr got frustrated during a drill and kicked the ball across the room, narrowly missing the back of the head coach’s head. Fitch spun around and lit into Pete. “Maravich, goddammit!” During the tirade, Carr tried to step in to take the blame, but Maravich (who was Carr’s childhood idol) didn’t let him. So the next day, one day before the Celtics’ first preseason game, Pistol Pete Maravich retired from the NBA at age 33. Following Maravich’s departure, Fitch said, “I wasn't counting on Pete any more than last season, even in Tiny's absence. Chris and Gerry (Henderson) were playing ahead of him. So, no, it wasn't a situation in which Pete was letting us down.”
The day after Pete left, the Celtics prepared to play their first preseason game. Compared to the preseason schedules of 2010, the 1980 schedule was quite quirky. They played 8 games in 13 days, including a tidy middle stretch of three games in three nights where the bookend games were part of a Madison Square Garden doubleheader. Below is the list of opponents and venues:
- September 21 – New Jersey Nets (New Haven, CT)
- September 23 – New York Knicks (Portland, ME)
- September 25 – Milwaukee Bucks (NY, NY – MSG, 1st game of doubleheader)
- September 26 – Milwaukee Bucks (Hartford, CT)
- September 27 – New York Knicks (NY, NY – MSG, 2nd game of doubleheader)
- September 29 – Indianapolis Pacers (Indianapolis, IN)
- August 1 – Chicago Bulls (Evansville, IN)
- August 3 – New York Knicks (Terre Haute, IN)
The last sequence of games is interesting for two reasons, two homecomings of sorts. First, Larry Bird was getting a game in Terre Haute where he rose to prominence on the Indiana State team. Second, the jaunt through southern Indiana was bringing Dave Cowens perilously close to his old Kentucky home.
