1980 NBA Finals Game 3

This was a tough game for Philadelphia and no mistake. Slow out of the gate, and it was not nearly as close as the box score makes it out to be. 

The first game back on the home court after taking the advantage by splitting the set in LA…well, I don’t know if there’s any reality to the benefits of home court, but if there are any they failed in this instance. A nice addition to this recording of the broadcast is the inclusion of a very well performed saxophone rendition of the National Anthem by Grover Washington Jr.

I’m sure there were performances in both of the games in Los Angeles; it’s just that my personal copies don’t include them.

One thing seems to be clear at this point; Los Angeles is by far the more consistent team. In no quarter through the first three games have the Lakers scored fewer than twenty points, and the 76ers have already managed that feat three times. Even in their strongest performance thus far they succeeded in putting up a dud quarter that found a way to endanger a solid lead.  

I suppose it’s no shock that the free throw situation is polarly opposite from that it was in game 2, but I don’t think that is the story that defines this drubbing; that distinction would go to the rebound situation. The Lakers out rebounded the 76ers 56 to 37, and to be honest, the number of second (and third) chance shots the Lakers were taking makes this differential seem underreported if anything. I mean, the Lakers had three different players with five offensive rebounds. It might make clean up baskets like this one seem a matter of course,

But even among plays like it, this one stands out. 

Furthermore, there was definite foul trouble for the 76er big men throughout the game. Darryl Dawkins, just like in the game 1 loss, fouled out, and Caldwell Jones ended the game on the edge with 5. I’m sure this had a dramatic impact on the way Kareem was defensed even though I really don’t know what I’m talking about, so I can hardly be as sure as the first half of this sentence suggests. Speaking of fouls however, we must discuss what is probably the death knell for the 76ers in this particular contest. 

Despite being down by 14 at halftime, the 76ers had, on more than one occasion, shaved it to a meager 2 point deficit. It had ballooned back to 8 when this unfortunate bit of fate happened.

Now I’m new here, so I won’t pretend to have any expertise in the matter, but it would take a lot of work to convince me that this was some sort of offensive foul. While I would never blame the refs for the outcome of a game (my personal opinion is, you’ve got to win by a margin great enough to negate the effect of poor officiating), but this definitely took the wind out of the rally sails, and the 76ers would spend the remainder of the game looking up at the Lakers. The effect was two-fold which is what makes it such an impactful moment. First, it was a three point swing-what was about to be a 6 point deficit became 9- owing to Billy Cunningham’s understandable but inexcusable outburst and resultant technical foul. Second, it shifted the foul advantage away from the 76ers and toward the Lakers. In this instance Jabbar would have had his fourth foul which might have impacted his playing time for the remainder of the game, and Dawkins would eventually foul out with almost six minutes left in the game, dramatically altering the team on the court (again, I’m not suggesting that this would have definitely changed the outcome; the Lakers absolutely won it outright; it wasn’t stolen)

In an effort to cheer myself up I focused heavily on a solid performance from Dr. J who not only led his team in scoring, but delivered a handful of restorative moments as panacea to all the bruised hopes of the Philly faithful. You see, because he’s a doctor…

Though Hollins did not necessarily have a restorative performance, he did get to shine a little.

Despite my biased highlighting, this looked like a clinic that the Lakers were putting on, and they executed like it was a matter of course. I would say mistake free, but they managed to far outpace the 76ers with regard to turnovers; it just didn’t matter because of the aforementioned rebound situation. When you shoot fewer field goals at a lower percentage than your opponent and still win, you know you’ve done a lot of everything else right. 

Since there were no celebrity sightings in this game, and the cameramen in Philadelphia were less willing to draw attention to the lovely ladies in attendance, I will spare this moment for a possible basketball lesson learned. I noticed from the first that the referees were calling out the numbers of the offending players to a recorder on the sidelines, but it wasn’t until this game that I noticed that all the player numbers were tailored to make this possible with only the fingers on two hands. This is going to sound quite obvious to tried and true basketball fans, but I’m only a man of moderate intelligence, so I will notice things (at the very best) at a moderate rate. Now of course this might prove to be untrue if I keep watching, and perhaps I’m showing my complete ignorance of the iconic player who wore the number 78, but for now I’ll be quite self-satisfied to have even noticed. Numbers like 33, 32, 52, and 10 appear to be quite common and numbers over 5 only appear if the number is less than 10. Neat piece of trivia if true. But perhaps I don’t deserve even that much credit as I was certainly looking for anything to distract me from watching the team I was rooting for get beat like they stole something.