It's a Garden party for the 1982 Sixers

ATHLETES WILL tell you they need a chip on their shoulder to motivate them. The Sixers entered Boston Garden on May 23, 1982, with a chip on their shoulder the size of Devils Tower.

The fans didn't believe they could win. A member of the media went so far as to question why the Sixers were going to Boston at all, figuring doom was predestined. And even their own general manager doubted them.

And then there was history. In nine previous Game 7s on their parquet floor, the Celtics had lost just once (to the eventual NBA champion Knicks in 1973). And when it came to the Sixers winning the seventh game in Boston, they were 0-3.

In NBA history, four times a team had lost a series after being up, 3-1. Two of those teams were the Sixers, and both times they lost to the Celtics.

History was not an ally.

So, how did a team that was blown out in Game 1 by 40 points and lost a possible clincher at home in Game 6 come back and beat the Celtics, 120-106, in a Game 7 in Boston?

It came down to chips.

"Not many people expected us to win this game," forward Steve Mix said that Sunday afternoon. "What we're saying now is 'to hell with you' to the people that thought we couldn't. That can include fans at the Spectrum, fans around the country, writers, broadcasters, whoever. You all know who you are. If it applies, you're included. If it doesn't, it's nice to have you with us.

"We felt all along that we had the talent and capability of getting this far, but after a while we thought we were the only ones who believed that."

General manager Pat Williams, who had his doubts, said, "If we had lost [to Boston], we would have been so far below ground, I don't know how we would have pulled ourselves back up."

With Celtics fans walking around the Garden wearing sheets and calling themselves the ghosts of Game 7s past, the chip started to get heavier. The Sixers led at the half, 52-49, and scored the first six points of the third quarter. The Celtics rallied to within 64-62, but the Sixers weren't about to let up.

Andrew Toney hit a jumper, Maurice Cheeks hit a pull-up jumper and little-used forward Mike Bantom had a putback. The Sixers led, 70-62, and never looked back.

"If we went in to the game thinking we were going to fold, then we shouldn't have even shown up," Toney would say later.

Toney lived up to his nickname, the Boston Strangler. He torched the Celtics' guards for 34 points (14-for-23 from the field) and fueled the second-half demolition.

"What we've done is avoid history that would have been made at our own expense," said Julius Erving, who scored 20 of his 29 points after halftime. "I care so much for the people on this team . . . it would have been awfully difficult to lose another series, 4-3. I don't know how I'd have dealt with the next 8 months, or even next season."

Behind Erving and Toney, the Sixers cruised into the NBA Finals, where they would meet the Los Angeles Lakers.

The Boston fans showed their class in the waning moments of the game when they began chanting, "Beat LA! Beat LA!" It was a perfect sendoff for the Sixers.

While the players had the chip, coach Billy Cunningham had a boulder. He joined the Sixers in 1965, right after "Havlicek Stole the Ball." He was nursing a broken wrist when the Celtics recovered from a 3-1 deficit in 1968. And in 1981, as a coach, his team had lost another 3-1 lead to Boston. He wanted to win this one badly.

After the game, Cunningham, who had many sleepless nights over the 1981 defeat, addressed the media and showed his competitive side.

"I'm going to be real quick," he said. "I only have two things to say. No. 1, I want to thank the Celtics fans for the way they responded at the end [with the chants], because that was a real show of class. No. 2, I'm ecstatic for the 12 guys and the coaches, and that's it. Everybody buried us. Period. Goodbye. That's it for me, babe. I've had enough of you guys."

And he walked out.

"Billy was pissed," said Harold Katz, in his first playoff as an owner, "because everybody wrote us off. We get written off more than any team I ever heard of."

Bantom, a local guy who played at Roman Catholic, Saint Joe's and was a member of the 1972 Olympic team, also took offense to how the team was perceived.

"You guys [the media] wrote 'Choke' and it was never true," Bantom said. "We played our hearts out to prove you all wrong. Look around the room, and you know our hearts were in this.

"I don't think people understand how much it hurts to be called 'losers' and 'chokers.' So we said the hell with it and won for the guys in this room. . . . I've never been this emotional during or after a game, and I love the feeling. It's ecstacy."

It is believed that the win in Boston exhausted the Sixers to such an extent that they had nothing left against the Lakers. It might have been the one championship series the fans didn't feel too badly about losing.

"All that went on Sunday," Katz said, "was an all-time high for me. We went into the Boston Garden and won a game nobody else thought we would win, then we came home and discovered they had to turn people away at the airport. It was unreal."

Seven years later, Katz still was on the same high.

"Beating them in Game 7 in Boston in 1982, after losing in 1981, was a greater thrill than winning the world championship in Los Angeles [in 1983]," Katz said in 1989.

It all came down to the chips.