Sport: Laker Talent, Celtic Team

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In their steamy North Station gym, where eleven of Russell's championship banners drooped beside three others on a 97° night, the Celtics ran several Lakers and a referee to near exhaustion to win the fifth game going away and take an improbable lead. Larry Bird, the one with the coattails now, strangely found it cooler to run down the floor than to sit and be fanned by preposterous Cornerman M.L. Carr's flapping towels. Bird scored 34 points and gathered 17 rebounds.

Though they man different posts, direct comparisons between Magic and Bird have been unavoidable since Michigan State and Johnson beat Indiana State and Bird in the National Collegiate Athletic Association finals of 1979. Johnson is more dazzling, but Bird is more amazing.

He can neither run nor jump with the best athletes in the game, but he senses where to run and when to jump before any of the rest. In no other way does he seem sophisticated, but his basketball instincts are what lift the Boston team above its talent.

When Bird seemed left out of the offense in Game 6 at Los Angeles, the Lakers pulled even with one game to go in the longest season.

Often when the most is promised, the least is delivered, but New England was satisfied last week with an unexceptional 111-102 final victory. Bird was named the Most Valuable Player. No city cheers a white star more enthusiastically than Boston. Climbing a mountain the last quarter, Los Angeles approached within three points at 105-102 and had the ball.

But then Magic mishandled it twice. In the back of his mind, Johnson said, he was trying to atone for his transgressions.

Friends Isiah Thomas of Detroit and Mark Aguirre of Dallas stayed up with him afterward and talked through the night.

Celtic Center Robert Parish had 16 rebounds to Jabbar's six in the last game, Boston 52 to the Lakers 33. Forward Cedric Maxwell, with a flair for rising up at great occasions, scored 14 points at the foul line alone. This championship seemed to prompt a broader interest than usual, and the seventh game drew the largest TV audience in pro basketball history. When the live and ravenous crowd broke through and overran the court, Jabbar was stripped of his goggles, though not of his clear view. "It got away from us," he said simply. "I don't think it matters too much now who has the most talent. They had the best team."

—By Tom Callahan