Pritchard joins Bird, KG in Celtics history with killer Finals shot

Pritchard joins Bird, KG in Celtics history with killer Finals shot originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

When Payton Pritchard’s halfcourt heave splashed at the halftime buzzer on Monday night, Celtics fans the world over shared the same thought: “We’re winning this game.”

There’s a moment like that in every Finals, the shot that puts an exclamation point on the championship. In Monday’s Game 5 demolition of the Mavericks, it came early, but sometimes victory isn’t assured until the closing moments.

In any event, the Celtics have now won five championships since 1981, and each has featured its own exclamation point, the shorthand for the basket that springs immediately to mind when we picture that magical clinching night.

Here they are, with a healthy heaping of Larry Bird.

1981 – Bird’s dagger

The 3-pointer remained a curiosity in 1981. The shot fittingly had been introduced during Bird’s rookie campaign a year earlier, but he hadn’t really embraced it, making only 20 the entire 1980-81 season.

Bird already recognized the shot’s potential as a psychological weapon, however, to be deployed to devastating and demoralizing effect. With the Celtics clinging to a 3-point lead in the final two minutes of Game 6 vs. the Rockets, he drilled a dagger 3 from the corner that clinched the franchise’s 14th title.

He pumped his fist running back up court, his first championship secure, and his legacy as a playoff assassin born.

1984 – Bird “chugging down the court”

The Celtics weren’t the better team in 1984, but they were the tougher one, and that’s how they outlasted the Lakers in seven classic games. Perhaps no play from the entire series better exemplified their indomitable will than Bird’s transition dunk “chugging down the court,” in the words of broadcaster Dick Stockton, late in the second quarter.

The Lakers had multiple chances to score during the preceding scrum, but the Celtics denied Mitch Kupchak at the rim before Magic Johnson missed a short hook. Bird grabbed the rebound, split two defenders, and executed a perfect give-and-go fast break with Cedric Maxwell, who found him for the dunk that is immortalized…

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Author : NBC Sports Boston

Publish date : 2024-06-19 16:54:04

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