Not Everything Goes Celtics’ Way at Boston Garden

And now another entry in the Celtic chronicles.

Add famous disasters: Kevin McHale loses the rebound of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s missed free throw in Tuesday night’s Game 4, putting the ball back into Magic Johnson’s hands for the game-winning shot.

No one still is sure how it happened, except for Mychal Thompson, who says he knocked it off McHale. McHale concedes that this might be true, except that he thinks whoever it was got his arm, not the ball. Both McHale and Thompson concede that McHale might also have collided with Robert Parish.

Red Auerbach, of course, sees a more sinister hand in this--referee Earl Strom’s.

This baby goes to the head of the list, moments the Celtics would like to forget and everyone else wants to remember in Boston Garden:

--Bob Cousy’s Free-Throw Airball, Game 7 of the 1957 finals against the St. Louis Hawks, with the Celtics en route to their first title.

“We’re in the huddle,” says Tom Heinsohn, a member of that team. “Cousy’s standing off to the side. He’s a great player, experienced, we’re not worried about him. All the discussion is what we’ll do after he makes the free throw.

“We go back out. I never used to watch the ball leave the shooter’s hand. I just watched his knees. When he bent his knees, I’d go.

“I saw his knees bend and I went. I looked over my shoulder for the ball--and there was no ball. It couldn’t have traveled five feet.”

Did Heinsohn ever talk with Cousy about it?

“I didn’t talk to Cooz about things like that,” Heinsohn said.

--Russell Hits the Guy Wire, Game 7, 1965 Eastern Conference finals against the Philadelphia 76ers, who trailed, 110-109, in the last :09. Bill Russell, inbounding the ball, threw it off the wire holding the backboard. The 76ers got the ball back, but John Havlicek stole Hal Greer’s inbounds pass.

--The Heard Shot ‘Round the World, Garfield Heard’s 17-footer with one second left in Game 5 of the ’76 finals. The series was tied, 2-2, but the Celtics had a one-point lead with a second left in regulation. The Phoenix Suns took possession but, with no timeouts left, asked for an extra one to stop the clock, incurring a technical foul--the brainchild of former Celtic Paul Westphal, sitting on the Suns’ bench after fouling out. The Celtics made the free throw awarded on the technical, but Heard then made the desperation turnaround. The game went three overtimes and the Celtics won.

Kevin McHale, on the information that his former Minnesota teammate, Mychal Thompson, is bulking up with weight work: “After having (Rick) Mahorn lean on me, these guys feel like flypaper.”

McHale, reminded that the Celtics have twice rallied from 3-1 deficits to force seventh games in the 1980s, both times against the 76ers:

“Different format. If you’re down, 3-1, I’d rather have the fifth game and the seventh game at home (as the Celtics did both times). We’re going to play the fifth game at home and the sixth and seventh games out there.”

No team has ever rallied from a 3-1 deficit to win the NBA finals.

“The only thing we can do is win,” Laker Coach Pat Riley said. “If we lose, there will only be public humiliation, and rightfully so.

“The way we’ve played, and Boston has been struggling, they’ve been playing hurt and courageously, if they come back to win they’ll be the greatest team in the history of sports.

” . . . That’s the ultimate fear (for the Lakers), the public degradation.”

Boston Coach K.C. Jones, who said after Tuesday’s game that referee Earl Strom looked like he was wearing a Laker uniform, was asked Wednesday if he still felt as strongly about Strom.

Jones: “I talked about it last night. Were you there?”

Reporter: “Yes.”

Jones: “Then you heard it.”

Add officials: TV stations both here and in L.A. showed footage of Boston General Manager Red Auerbach berating the officials after the game.

“You’ve got no (bleep),” Auerbach was heard to say on TV, where at least one station played his comment uncensored.

Riley relaxed his edict prohibiting wives to make trips with the Lakers, inviting them to join their husbands after Game 3. The wives have to have separate rooms, however.

“That’s OK, though,” said Wanda Cooper, wife of Laker guard Michael Cooper. “The man (Cooper) is weird during the playoffs. He wants to be intense, he wants to weird out.

“I don’t want to be with him.”

Danny Ainge, on Boston’s chances of coming back: “It hasn’t been done often in history, but we’re not getting ready to die yet.”

Times staff writer Gordon Edes contributed to this story.