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Hayes: On way to NBA title, Sixers first took care of the hated Boston Celtics

DURING THE NBA playoffs in 1967, there was a scalper who stood outside of Convention Hall. He would approach you and quietly ask whether you wanted to get inside; 10 bucks a head, twice the regular ticket price. He would tell you to follow him down the da

DURING THE NBA playoffs in 1967, there was a scalper who stood outside of Convention Hall. He would approach you and quietly ask whether you wanted to get inside; 10 bucks a head, twice the regular ticket price. He would tell you to follow him down the dark alley on the Hall's south side, where he would stomp on a manhole cover that would magically pop open. He'd shimmy down a ladder and guide you through a maze of pipes and machinery, under the building to the other side, then up another ladder and out another manhole cover.

He would approach an unmarked door, knock in code - thump-thump-a-thump-thump, - and the door would open, in you go. You would find yourself backstage at Convention Hall with the janitors and the security guards, all looking the other way. You would walk through a smoky haze (smoking was allowed back then), walk toward 13,000 other fans - mostly men; some of them with their own basketballs. These men came from all walks of life, but they shared a common passion.

They all hated the Boston Celtics.

The Celtics had won 10 straight Eastern Division crowns and eight straight NBA titles on their way to 11 of 13. You wouldn't have a seat and you might not see a shot, but you would have been a part of a Philadelphia emancipation.

"It was important," said Fran Dunphy, "that we finally were going to get those Celtics."

They got them good. They won the best-of-seven series in five games, the premature crescendo after a recordsetting, 68-win regular season. You could not fault the Sixers' euphoria.

No team has irritated Philadelphia like those Boston squads. The franchise had lost to the Celtics in the Eastern Division Finals and been denied the NBA Finals berth five times in the previous nine years. Wilt Chamberlain anchored the teams with the last four losses; two with the Warriors, in 1960 and 1962, then two with the Sixers, in 1965 and 1966. Validation ran through the Boston Garden; through Bill Russell, John Havlicek and that cigar-sucking coach and general manager, Red Auerbach. Validation arrived April 11, 1967, by 24 points. Five Sixers scored at least 21.

"A decade of bitter, pent-up frustration was washed away in a flood of delirious joy . . . as the 76ers sledgehammered Boston, 140-116, to end the longest dynasty in sports history," the Daily News crowed the next day.

There was, of course, the small matter of defeating the San Francisco Warriors in the NBA Finals, which took the distracted Sixers six games. No matter. The harder work was done.

"We knew we would beat the Warriors. It was just a matter of by how much," Hall of Fame guard Hal Greer said recently at the unveiling of his statue. "The real championship came against the Celtics. We'd won all those games, but we knew we were going to have to come up against the Celtics. That year, we just had the team that could compete with them."

That year, they matched the Celtics' depth; in his second season, Billy Cunningham had become a selfless, scintillating sixth man. That year, they played a team game; Greer led the Sixers in scoring in the playoffs with 27.7 points per game, 29.2 against the Celtics, while Wilt scored 21.7 and 21.6. That year, they had fired Dolph Schayes, the reigning coach of the year, and hired Alex Hannum, who coached Bob Petit and the St. Louis Hawks to the 1958 title over Bill Russell and the Celtics.

That year, they had it all. Fans like Dunphy knew it.

Dunphy had just graduated from Malvern Prep, was playing at La Salle and was familiar with Philadelphia's frustrations.

"I don't think there's any doubt that win validated the Sixers," Dunphy said.

Tom Gola and the Philadelphia Warriors won a title in 1956 and the Eagles won the 1960 NFL title, but, spurred by Chamberlain and Russell, by 1967, the NBA had been transformed. Besides, baseball was king, and fans still ached from the disappointments of the 1950 Whiz Kids and the Phillies' 1964 collapse. The day after the Sixers beat the Celtics, the Phillies shared top billing in leading the Daily News' sports coverage.

For basketball fans, the Sixers' futility against the Celtics was just as a deep a pain. Chamberlain's rivalry with Russell got the headlines, but Greer was just as tortured. As a member of the Syracuse Nationals, who became the Sixers in 1963, Greer also had lost to the Celtics four times in the conference finals, just like Wilt. It was Greer who, in 1965, threw away the Sixers' chance to beat the Celtics in Game 7 and delivered immortality to Celtics announcer Johnny Most: "Havlicek steals it! . . . Havlicek stole the ball! . . . It's all over!"

The Celtics needed only five games to beat the Sixers in the Division Finals in 1966 . . . all of which made 1967 so sweet.

"It meant a great deal," Greer said. "The city liked it."

The city loved it.

"It was, like, 'Whew!' " said Sonny Hill, Chamberlain's basketball contemporary and the godfather of elite Philadelphia summer league basketball. "We finally beat the big, bad Boston Celtics."

Hill was 30 that spring, a semipro player and a rising union official, as Philly as it gets. Hill respected Auerbach, but it always irked him when Red lit up his trademark cigar after a big win. Hill recalls a newspaper photo taken after the Sixers clinched the series with a Game 5 win at Convention Hall: a fan stood on his chair and lit a cigar with a deliciously wicked grin.

"He was saying, 'Hey Red! You can't light that cigar of yours now!' " Hill said.

Boston shrugged. Philadelphia hated Boston. Boston was used to it.

"A whole bunch of teams popped up at that time as 'Who's going to take it away from the Celtics?' " said Bob Brown, a lifelong New England basketball coach.

In 1967, Bob Brown was the 29-year-old father of 6-year-old Brett Brown, the current Sixers coach.

Maybe Boston would have cared more if the Sixers had won in 1965, or in 1968, when Cunningham missed the finals with a broken wrist and Chamberlain inexplicably refused to shoot in the second half of Game 7.

"Boston Is Dead . . . Long Live the 76ers!" the Daily News prophesied on April 12, 1967. Not quite.

Before the 1968-69 season, Chamberlain forced a trade to Los Angeles and Hannum quit to join the ABA. It would be a decade before the Sixers made it back to the NBA Finals and 16 seasons before they won another title; and now, of course, 50 years since their last real chance at a dynasty.

"Championships in Philadelphia are always a big deal," said Saint Joseph's coach Phil Martelli, who was a seventh-grader at St. Philomela in Lansdowne, Pa., during the 1967 playoffs. "There wasn't TV coverage like there is now, but I'd read the Bulletin cover-to-cover every day."

If he wanted to actually see the Sixers play in the playoffs, he would go to the game; and, like any Philadelphian, he would gain entry by any means necessary.

You see, Martelli was one of the fanatics who gave that scalper 10 bucks to drop down a manhole outside of old Convention Hall.

hayesm@phillynews.com

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