76ers Tie Series with Celtics

Apr. 6, 1965 - “If you get knocked down on your backside long enough, you do one of two things — you either stay down and quit, or you get tough and you get up and fight.”Wilt Chamberlain was doing the talking, his head and shoulders rising above a ring of reporters who were jammed into a cubby-hole just off the 76er dressing room at Convention Hall.

The 76ers had just outfought the Boston Celtics, 109-103, in a tension-packed affair to even their best-of-seven NBA playoff series at 1-1. 

Philadelphia won tonight’s game the hard way — on sheer determined hustle. The 76ers did lose the ball 24 times through errors, and usually that is 23 more than you make against Boston and still survive. But they did survive because they always bounced back from those mistakes by trying that much harder.

Chamberlain was the hero. The 7-1 center played out of his skull for 48 hard minutes. He scored 30 points, a fantastic figure when you consider that he took only eight shots at the basket on his own. The majority of his points were made on guide-ins of teammates’ off-target firings or on rebounds. He also passed off directly for 16 more points, screened for many more, and grabbed 39 rebounds — only one shy of the playoff record.

His individual foe, Bill Russell, was outplayed, at least in the statistics line (12 points, 16 rebounds, 5 assists), but Chamberlain isn’t about to follow that line of thought.

“Look,” he said firmly, “people have tried hard to make this an individual thing. It’s not. I’m not playing against Russell; I’m playing against Boston. I am convinced I can beat Russell more than I can beat Boston. 

“It takes a team effort to beat them, and we got that tonight. Everybody who played helped, and that’s the way it has to be if we are going to take them in the series. I think we can do that if we just stay tough.”

“I told you guys this would be a war,” Celtics coach Red Auerbach said afterward. “Some of you thought I was conning you. Now you know I was telling the truth. Philly is tough — very tough.”

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