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The 1984 NBA Finals, also known as Showdown '84, was the championship round of the 1983-84 NBA season. In 1984, the Boston Celtics defeated the Los Angeles Lakers in a seven-game Finals, winning Game 7 111-102. Larry Bird averaged 27 points and 14 rebounds a game during the series, earning the Finals Most Valuable Player (MVP). Bird was also named the league regular season MVP for that year. This series was the long-awaited rematch of the Los Angeles Lakers and Boston Celtics after their rivalry was revived in 1979 with the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird pair entering the league. After the Lakers won Game 1, a crucial steal in Game 2 led to a tie game and the Celtics were able to win in overtime to tie the series. The Lakers won Game 3 easily and almost won Game 4, but were again thwarted. Now tied 2-2, the Lakers and Celtics each held serve at their home court to send the series to Boston for Game 7. Game 5 was a classic, with Bird coming up with a huge game in one of the (literally) hottest games ever () in the non-air conditioned Boston Garden. Game 7 was also contested in hot temperatures that hovered around . The score was close but the contest eventually went to the Celtics. Cedric Maxwell scored 24 points against the Los Angeles Lakers in the decisive Game 7 victory. Los Angeles won all three games played on Sunday afternoons. Boston won the games played on Tuesday night, Wednesday night, Thursday night, and Friday night. The Series schedule was an odd schedule, due entirely to the whims of television. Game One was played on a Sunday afternoon in Boston, about 36 hours after the Lakers had eliminated the Phoenix Suns in the Western Finals. The teams then had three plus days off, not playing until Thursday night. Then, after Game 3 on Sunday afternoon in Los Angeles, the teams had two plus days off, not playing again until Wednesday night. That in turn started a wearying back-and-forth across the country ... Wednesday night at LA, Friday night at Boston, Sunday afternoon at LA, and Tuesday night at Boston ... to end the series. The following year, the Finals format switched to 2-3-2, where Games 1, 2, 6, and 7 were hosted by the team with the best record. The change in format came after Red Auerbach complained about the constant travelling during the finals. The 2-2-1-1-1 format would return for the 2014 NBA Finals. ==Background== The seeds of the 1984 Finals were first sown five years earlier, during the 1979 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament. In the final game of the tournament, Larry Bird and his erstwhile unbeaten Indiana State Sycamores lost to Magic Johnson and his Michigan State Spartans by the score of 75-64. After the tournament, both entered the NBA in the 1979–80 season with high expectations. Bird, who was selected 6th in the 1978 NBA Draft but committed back to Indiana State for his senior season, was named Rookie of the Year after leading the Celtics to a 32-game turnaround from the previous year, going from 29 to 61 wins. The expected Celtics-Lakers finals, however, never happened. The Philadelphia 76ers defeated the Celtics in the conference finals before losing to the Lakers in the 1980 NBA Finals, with Johnson earning Finals MVP honors for his Game 6 performance. Since then Bird won a championship in 1981, then Magic led the Lakers to the finals in 1982 and 1983, winning in the former. In the 1983–84 season, the Celtics won 62 games, while the Lakers won 54, topping their respective conferences. In the playoffs, the Celtics defeated the Bullets in four, the Knicks in seven, and the Bucks in five, while the Lakers defeated the Kings in three, the Mavericks in five, and the Suns in six, thus rekindling the Celtics–Lakers rivalry in the Finals. Larry Bird earned his first MVP award. While Bird was out to redeem himself, the Lakers as a team were also seeking retribution after losing all seven Finals matchups to the Celtics, the last coming in 1969. The Lakers suffered a key injury when their 3rd leading scorer, Jamaal Wilkes (17 PPG) was ruled out of the finals. This cost the Lakers valuable depth, as James Worthy, a key contributor off the bench, would now have to start in Wilkes' place. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「1984 NBA Finals」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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