To Danny Ainge, Gerald Henderson stealing the ball was an even bigger deal than when Hondo did it.
The iconic play by Boston Celtics forward luminary John Havlicek is one of the most well-known plays in NBA history, but to Ainge, its impact was far smaller than then-teammate Gerald Henderson’s late robbery of Los Angeles Laker forward James Worthy in Game 2 on the 1984 NBA Finals.
The steal and subsequent layup would give Boston life, sending the game to overtime and an eventual win that likely saved the series.
Havlicek’s theft did secure a series win, but the Celtics held the lead already in a lower-stakes Eastern Conference championship series against the Philadelphia 76ers.
Appearing on the “Locked On Celtics Podcast” Monday, current Celtics team president and former guard Ainge related his opinion on the gravity of that play.
“Henderson’s steal in Game 2 [of the 1984 Finals], that might have been one of the biggest plays, right there with Larry Bird’s steal of Isaiah [Thomas] in Detroit [against the Pistons in Game 5 of the 1987 East Conference Finals]” opined Ainge via MassLive’s Karalis. “That steal from Henderson was better than the Havlicek stole the ball play.”
“If we don’t get that steal and win that Game 2 in Boston, we probably don’t win the series,” added the team’s president. Henderson would relate in a 2014 interview that without that play, the Celtics might even have been swept, with many viewing L.A. as the better team that season.
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To hear more about that fateful play, other critical pick-pocketing in Boston’s past and many other aspects of Ainge’s tenure with the team throughout the 1980s, listen to the podcast embedded above.
It’s a treasure of all sort of little-known nuggets from that glorious era of Celtics history, and more than worth the listen.
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