1980-81 NBA Finals

Result

Games

Finals MVP

Cedric Maxwell. Maxwell was named Finals MVP for the champion Celtics after averaging around 17.7 points on efficient shooting across the series.

Series context

The 1981 NBA Finals pitted a resurgent Boston Celtics team, freshly built around a young core of Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and rookie Kevin McHale, against a Houston Rockets team that had backed into the playoffs with a losing regular-season record. Boston had gone 62-20 in the regular season and needed a dramatic seven-game Eastern Conference Finals win over Philadelphia, overcoming a 3-1 series deficit, to reach the championship round. Houston, coached by Del Harris and led by the powerful low-post scoring and rebounding of Moses Malone, became one of the few sub-.500 teams ever to reach the Finals, having upset the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers along the way. The series opened in Boston, where the Celtics escaped with a tense 98-95 win capped by one of Bird's signature plays: a driving, cross-body reverse layup in traffic that has become one of the most replayed shots of his career. Houston stunned the Celtics in Game 2, winning 92-90 behind Malone's 31 points to even the series and take away home-court advantage. Boston reasserted control in Game 3, throttling Houston's offense in a 94-71 win that stands as one of the lowest-scoring Finals games in modern history. The Rockets responded in Game 4, riding a huge advantage in offensive rebounds to a 91-86 victory and tying the series at two games apiece. Moses Malone's brash pre-Game 5 comments became bulletin-board material that fired up Boston, who blew Houston out 109-80 behind Maxwell's 28 points. The Celtics closed out the series in Game 6 back in Houston, winning 102-91 as Bird, who had been held to modest scoring totals in Games 3 and 4 by tenacious Rockets defense, broke through with a strong all-around performance down the stretch. The title was Boston's 14th championship and the first of the 1980s, kicking off the Bird-era Celtics dynasty. Maxwell, not Bird, was named Finals MVP, a somewhat unheralded but well-earned recognition of his clutch scoring and leadership throughout the series, particularly in the decisive Game 5 and Game 6 wins. This series is often remembered as the true launching point of the Celtics' 1980s run and set the stage for the decade-long rivalry with the Lakers that would follow. Beyond the games themselves, the 1981 Finals marked a low point for the league's television visibility: CBS tape-delayed four of the six games, including the Game 6 clincher, airing them at 11:30 p.m. Eastern in most markets so as not to disrupt local prime-time lineups, and the series drew just a 6.7 household rating, among the lowest in Finals history. It was also the last Finals broadcast this way; starting the following season the NBA shifted its schedule so the Finals would be played entirely in June, after the May ratings-sweeps period, and every game aired live from 1982 onward. Houston's run to the Finals was itself historic: at 40-42, the Rockets remain one of only three teams to reach the Finals with a losing regular-season record, having upset the defending-champion Lakers in the first round before beating San Antonio and Kansas City. Boston, by contrast, needed to erase a 3-1 deficit against Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference Finals, winning Game 7 by a single point, 91-90, before dispatching Houston for the title.

Sources

• Wikipedia - 1981 NBA Finals
• Basketball-Reference - 1981 NBA Finals
• Forbes - There Was Once A Time When TV Networks Tape Delayed The NBA Finals