Milwaukee Hopes to Buck the Odds and Win at Boston Today

That wheezing sound you hear is the Commonwealth of Massachusetts trying to breathe through tightened windpipes. The Celtics have blown a 3-1 lead over the Bucks and the community is being mobilized again down to every Middlesex village and farm. It gives you an idea of what those poor British were up against.

Robert Parish is expected to limp back into action on his sprained ankle for today’s seventh game (10 a.m., PDT), though he didn’t practice Saturday.

Bill Walton hasn’t practiced or played in a week but he could turn up, too. We’re looking at two possible farewells here; this could be Don Nelson’s last day as a Buck or Big Red’s as a basketball player.

“Being that it’s a seventh game, we would encourage Bill to make himself available to play,” said Dr. Thomas Silva, the Celtic team physician.

K.C. Jones closed practice Saturday for the first time this season, explaining to a Boston writer, “We have some serious stuff to work on. If we let the Boston press in, we have to let everyone in.”

You can see the problem. If out-of-town writers were to continue attending, who might want to sit in next? Sam Donaldson? Magic Johnson? The Red Army?

Larry Bird is expected to come out blazing. Actually, he was expected to do that--and did--in Game 6. He went 6 for 8 in the first period but 3 for 12 the rest of the night.

Was he just not getting the ball, per his own suggestion? The Celtics did, in fact, start the fourth quarter Friday by going low twice in a row to Kevin McHale, who missed both shots while the Bucks blew the game open.

Maybe after playing such extended time--Bird is the first player in five seasons to average 40 minutes--he’s just tired? In the last two second halves, he’s shot a combined 4 for 20.

“I think you’d expect a Larry Bird game,” said Larry Bird Saturday. “If they just keep getting the ball to me, if DJ (Dennis Johnson) keeps throwing it to me, I can score as many points as K.C. wants me to.”

K.C. would opt for a lot, the Celtics having surrendered no fewer than 120 five straight times. Another sign of fatigue? They took pains to point out that Games 3 and 4 were overtime and double overtime, respectively, but then the Bucks hit them with 129 in Game 5 and 121 in Game 6.

The Bucks are smaller and quicker and they’ve made a special effort to spread the floor, then take it to the hoop. To fail to spread the floor, notes Nelson, is to find five Celtics waiting in the lane, a task similar to dodging five rhinos in an alley.

Separating them gives an advantage to the Bucks’ cutters and slashers, Paul Pressey (after an 0-12 Game 1, he’s 30 for 60), John Lucas, Ricky Pierce and most of all, Sidney Moncrief, back suddenly to his old form after having missed most of the season with knee trouble. Maybe that’s working for him, as it did for Michael Jordan last spring; one thing about being in rehab all season, it keeps you from getting worn down with everyone else.

Moncrief leads the Bucks with a 22.7 average. In the Bucks’ prior series, against the 76ers, he played less.

“Two reasons,” Nelson says. “He wasn’t productive enough and we didn’t want to push him to where he couldn’t play the next game.

“I didn’t think I would see this again from him this season. I had an outside hope, maybe if he got some good therapy over the summer, maybe he could come back and have a good year.

“This guy is carrying the whole club now. It’s like the whole squad is saying, ‘Wow.’ ”

Let no one underestimate the Bucks’ task. This is Boston Garden and everyone knows it, including the Bucks. They duck the question if posed directly, but awe leaks out at other times, like when Lucas was asked to compare his steal on Fred Roberts Friday to the famous one by John Havlicek. Lucas laughed at the very thought.

“John Havlicek was a great player,” he said. “He did it in the Garden. The Mecca is a nice place but . . . “

You want to hear a wall of noise, tune in today. Hospitality ends at game time, or before.

Nelson, the ex-Celtic whose No. 19 hangs from the Garden ceiling, went on a Boston TV station Saturday and said, among other things, he didn’t expect the home-court advantage to mean anything. The man in the field then threw it back to his anchor in the studio who said he hoped all the Celtic faithful had heard that libel and were ready to do something about it. Nelson didn’t even get a gift certificate for more fish ties.

On the other hand, the Bucks are loose. They have less to lose and they know that, too.

“No matter what happens, it’ll have been a great season,” Lucas said. “We’ve overcome problems all year.

“They brought me in. That was a problem. Paul got hurt. That was a problem. Sid got hurt. That was a problem. Terry Cummings (who is a lay Pentecostal minister) was worried about what they were saying about evangelists. That was a problem. You didn’t know what was going on with our coach. That was a problem.”

Today, all they have to worry about are five or six Celtics, 15,000 fans and perhaps some ghosts.

All the Celtics have to deal with are the 14,492 minutes their regulars have played this season--it’s no time for the weary; the weather forecast is for 80 degrees which could translate into three figures on the parquet--plus the accumulated expectations of 30 years of tradition.

Nobody may get out of here alive.