Basketball At Its Toughest

Detroit's Cobo Arena was packed as the Lakers and Celtics got ready for the first game in their 24-hour vendetta. The biggest crowd ever to see a professional game in that city's history (11,028) screamed from the multicolored seats on all four levels of the hall. A high school coach from West Farmington, Ohio brought his team on a 300-mile round trip in 12� weather just to see the two teams meet. Even the players competing in the second game that night—Detroit and San Francisco—came in time to see the first game, like guest gourmets at a feast. "This is one I wouldn't miss," said San Francisco's Wilt Chamberlain. "I want to look over these ball clubs once. I think that the Lakers will probably beat the Celtics in the playoffs but the more I consider things the more I'm not so sure. Both of them have great starting teams, both have good benches and, you know, they want at each other. I want to watch 'em, man."

Hardly had the game begun when Elgin Baylor reached back and stuffed an elbow into Tom Sanders' stomach. It was meant more as a firm and informative maneuver than a malicious one, the pros being accustomed to inside play worthy of the Green Bay Packer line. Sanders immediately reached down and tugged hard on Baylor's trunks, pulling him out of position for a perfect pass. Sanders continued to bump Baylor, forcing him away from the action, and Baylor was having difficulty scoring. In the first quarter he had only two field goals. Baylor, as any basketball follower knows, usually has little trouble scoring 35 points a game against anyone.

The Celtics began to run away from the Lakers, and a fan in the seats shouted, "You are all bums without West." Jerry West, the Lakers' top playmaker and second highest scorer, had been missing from the Los Angeles lineup for nine days because of a pulled hamstring muscle in his left leg. He had been left home in L.A. The Lakers needed him, but the fan didn't realize that it was the wound-up Celtics that were making the western team look bad.

Cousy was so determined that he threw passes that even he had never tried before. Near the end of the first period he cocked the ball like a discus and fired it the length of the court to Bill Russell, who simply jumped and deflected it into the basket. Russell, Sam Jones and Sanders came back down the court with huge smiles on their faces.

Shortly thereafter the Celtics called time out, and discovered that Red Auerbach was unable to talk to them. He was limping around the sidelines with a charley horse. "It wasn't the excitement," he protested, but he never did explain exactly what it was.

Cousy continued to throw one beautiful pass after another until, near the end of the first half, his knees began to buckle from exhaustion. He hollered to Auerbach, "Get me! Get me! I've had it." By that time so had the Lakers, and Boston won in a romp 120-93.

"This game," said an elated Cousy afterward, "was my best of the season. We would have beaten them even if they had had West. We would have beaten anyone tonight because we were right all the way through. If only we didn't have to play the Lakers again tomorrow night, because this is the kind of a victory I could savor for a long, long time. We wanted this one and we would have done anything to get it."

Red Auerbach paced the corridor outside his team's dressing room, marveling at Cousy, Russell and his whole team. "That ought to take care of those——-," he said of Los Angeles. It should have, but it didn't.

The door of the Laker dressing room stayed closed. Later Fred Schaus repeated what he had been saying to his team. "I told them that there was a plane leaving for Boston the next morning," he said. "I told them that if anyone felt he couldn't play better tomorrow night than he did tonight he should fly back to Los Angeles instead. I said those who wanted to really play ball could meet me in the hotel lobby at 7:30 the next morning." After that the Lakers disappeared into the Detroit night.

The Celtics, meanwhile, were enjoying being the Celtics. Tommy Heinsohn, the rugged corner man, cut into a steak an hour after the game and said to Cousy, "Cooz, let me see those matches again." Cousy took out a book of matches with the presidential seal on the front and a picture of the White House on the back. "Cooz got these when we visited the White House last week," said Heinsohn. "He's become the only match dropper in the world. He won't go anyplace without them. We were just supposed to go on a tour of the White House, but the President saw our name on a list and invited us in to see him. He asked us how everything was going. When we lined up to shake his hand and say goodby I saw that Satch [ Sanders] was a little nervous. By the time he got up to the President, Satch was so flustered he just put his hand out and said, 'Take it easy, Baby.' "