1985 Overview
From Hoopedia
1984-85 NBA Season
It was the big hurt, Celtics style.
Favored to win the 1984 title, Los Angeles lost to Boston yet again, bowing to the same Celtics franchise that had defeated the Lakers seven previous times in the league championship series, an ache that stretched over parts of four decades and two cities. Afterwards, some even started referring to the Lakers’ floor leader as Tragic Johnson, after he had failed to make much magic against the Celtics.
Thus began the NBA’s grandest tale of redemption. Lakers Coach Pat Riley and his players spent the 1985 season starving their desires for a rematch.
The main diversion from this intensity came with the bevy of young talent that had entered the league in the 1984 draft, including Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley and John Stockton. Olajuwon was chosen first by Houston, Jordan third by Chicago, Barkley fifth by Philadelphia and Stockton 16th by Utah.
That summer Jordan thrilled television audiences in leading the United States to the gold medal in the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. “When Michael gets the ball on the break only one thing’s going to happen,” said Olympic teammate Steve Alford. “Some kind of dunk.” “Sometimes the players get into the habit of just watching Michael,” Alford said, “because he’s usually going to do something you don’t want to miss.”
NBA observers said the same thing once he joined the Bulls that fall. Jordan scored 27 in an early loss to the Celtics at Chicago Stadium. “I’ve never seen one player turn a team around like that,” Bird said afterward. “All the Bulls have become better because of him. . . . Pretty soon this place will be packed every night. . . . They’ll pay just to watch Jordan. Heck, there was one drive tonight. He had the ball up in his right hand, then he took it down. Then he brought it back up. I got a hand on it, fouled him, and he still scored. All the while, he’s in the air.
“You have to play this game to know how difficult that is. You see that and say, ‘Well, what the heck can you do?’”
In New York, Bernard King clinched the scoring title (32.9 points per game) despite suffering a serious knee injury with 27 games left in the season.
For the most part, though, the NBA was focused intently on the Celtics-Lakers matchup. During the regular season, Boston was the class of the East with 63 victories, and Bird enjoyed his best season to date, averaging 28.7 points, 10.5 rebounds and 6.6 assists per game.
Each member of Boston’s starting five—Bird, Parish, McHale, Dennis Johnson and Danny Ainge—played more than 2,500 minutes.
The Lakers, meanwhile, won 62 games and easily dispatched Phoenix, Portland and Denver to reach the Finals and a rematch with Boston, which had beaten Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia. Led by 38-year-old center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and a revitalized James Worthy, the Lakers went to Boston Garden for Game 1 filled with hope only to suffer a horrible 148-114 defeat that became known as the Memorial Day Massacre.
“That game was a blessing in disguise,” Riley said later. “It strengthened the fiber of this team.” Burning with humiliation, the Lakers won the next game in Boston, took two of the three games in Los Angeles and then closed out the series with a 111-100 decision in Game 6 on the parquet. The sound of silence in Boston Garden was sweet music, indeed, for generations of frustrated Laker faithful.
“All of our skeletons are out of the closet,” Riley said afterward. “I don’t want to hear about history anymore. The history is this: This was our year. And we did it on the parquet floor. Maybe that’s the ultimate test.”
