He just kept raising his game to another level how high could he go? Down by one in the final 30 seconds of a must-win Game 4, the Celtics tried to run a play for Bird, but James Worthy smothered him and held his jersey to keep him close. 2 At this point, we were convinced that Bird couldn’t be stopped. Two games later, he finished Detroit with a variety of backbreaking shots down the stretch, including a ludicrous 15-foot lefty banker that had to be seen to be believed. That’s the great thing about sports: when you hope for something improbable to happen, 4,999 times out of 5,000 it never happens, but then there’s the 5,000th time, and for God’s sake, it happens. When we were finished in the waning seconds of Game 5 of the Eastern Finals, Bird saved the season with his famous steal from Isiah, which remains the loudest I ever heard the Garden in my life, the only time I remember the upper balcony actually swaying because everyone was jumping up and down in sheer delight. Um, those were only five of the best seven guys on the team. Unfortunately, you can’t glance through Bird’s career statistics in the Official NBA Register and find the statistic for “most times the fans expected their best player to come through and he actually did.” So here’s a story about his most memorable game-winning shot, a shot that didn’t actually go in.Īfter winning three MVP awards, the Legend was rattling off the greatest run of his career in the spring of ’87, single-handedly dragging an aging roster through three punishing rounds despite a broken foot for McHale (gamely kept playing) and injuries to Bill Walton and Scott Wedman (both out), as well as sprained ankles for Parish and Ainge (playing hurt). I know this was the case because I lived through his prime - whether I have developed enough credibility in your eyes as a basketball thinker is up to you 1 - but I’m telling you, that’s how Boston fans felt in the spring of 1987.

After a while, we started expecting him to come through, and when he still came through, that’s when we were hooked for good. At the same time, he possessed heroic qualities because everyone in New England bought into his invincibility. You can’t call him a superhero because he wasn’t saving lives or making the world a better place. In the big scheme of things, number 33 was an extremely tall and well-coordinated guy who did his job exceptionally well. In honor of the 25th anniversary of Game 4 of the 1987 NBA Finals, here is an excerpt from Bill Simmons’s The Book of Basketball breaking down the final moments from the Boston Garden. Reprinted with permission of ESPN Books, an imprint of ESPN, Inc., New York, and Ballantine Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Editor’s note: The following is an excerpt from Bill Simmons’s The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy, copyright 2010 by Bill Simmons.

The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons