He Leaves the Smiles to Others

Robert Parish has the greatest game face I’ve ever seen on an athlete. It’s perfect. You imagine Sitting Bull looked like this when he stared over the battlefield and watched Custer coming.

It’s not mad, exactly, just stern. Not a glower, just a sort of frown. It’s dignified, not menacing. It’s stoic. It looks carved.

You can see why his teammates call him Chief. You look at Parish’s face and you can almost smell the smoke signals. It should have paint on it.

It’s not the face of a guy you would go up to and clap on the back. Or say, “Take a card.” It’s a face you’d like to see next to you in a lifeboat.

A game face is something the player puts on to intimidate the opposition, concentrate his own forces, focus his efforts. It is something between a scowl and a growl.

Not everybody bothers with it. Some guys play the game with a broad grin, others look harassed or worried or have this pained look of a guy who feels picked on.

Parish’s look would work well on a river boat. Don’t try to figure out what he’s got in his hand by his face. It’s the kind of face where, if he raises, fold.

The Boston Celtics come out in the public mind as the team of Bill Russell, Red Auerbach, Bob Cousy, Dave Cowens, Satch Sanders, Frank Ramsey, Bill Sharman, K. C. Jones, Larry Bird and all those superstars whose shirts are hanging off the rafters in Boston Garden.

It’s possible none of them were any more important to his era than Robert Parish was to his. For 10 years, he’s been the glue that has held the franchise together.

The middle was taken care of. The poker-faced 7-footer in the pivot released the Celtic sweep and let Larry Bird and Dennis Johnson and Kevin McHale roam the perimeter and rattle the boards. There were times when the Celtics should have been called the Parishioners.

A 16.7 lifetime scorer, he could get points when he had to. He turned it up a notch when Bird was injured, going from 14.3 points a night to 18.6. He also increased his playing time, from 2,300 minutes to 2,800, took 300 more shots and increased his rebounds from 628 to 996. When Bird returned, he went back to hod carrying.

He posts up, sets picks, blocks shots--more than 200 some years--but mostly he clogs up the enemy attack, muddles up all those lovely set-piece plays. Getting around Robert Parish is a little bit like taking a fort. The Celtics, after years of Bill Russell, are old hands at turning the play into their big chief in the middle and trusting him to blunt the enemy onslaught and get the ball back to the team in green.

He’s having a Parish year--averaging 16.2 points from the field, shooting 73% from the line, getting 10.1 rebounds a game. He has 31 steals and 42 blocks. And he does all this without changing expression.

But he’s had to do it in a changing game.

“The game isn’t dominated from the pivot anymore,” he said the other day, just after a 78-point burst by a small forward and two guards--James Worthy, Magic Johnson and Byron Scott--had led the Lakers past the Celtics, 116-110.

“The game has changed. They’ve gone to team defenses and trapping that take the ball out of your hands and keep it out of there.”

Basketball used to be a simpler proposition, a two-man game in which all Wilt Chamberlain needed was someone to bring the ball up for him, all Russell needed was someone to get under the outlet pass. The Detroit Pistons have taken the skyscrapers out of the game.

“It used to be a Kareem, a Willis Reed, a Moses Malone controlled the game,” Parish says. “You have to come up with another dimension today.”

It will, he suspects, require an adjustment on the part of the new superstar centers--Akeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing, David Robinson.

“You need more of an all-court game,” he says.

Parish’s own game appears to have been adjustable.

“He’s a what-it-takes player,” claims his coach, Jimmy Rodgers. “Robert has always been totally unselfish, team-oriented. We play off him.”

Where Akeem Olajuwon may be chafing about playing for a team several notches below his own capability, the Celtics’ Double-0 prefers to work with his team to improve.

“When I came up with San Francisco, Clifford Ray was the star center who worked with me, even though veterans used to snub rookies in those days,” he says. “I try to pay him back by doing the same thing.”

Says teammate McHale: “He never knows what his numbers are, just what the team’s are, what the score is.”

He may be the most respected player in Boston history. Boston is a town, you may remember, where they could boo Ted Williams. But people tend to stand up when Robert Parish comes into a room.

Around the league, it’s the same way. San Antonio’s super rookie, David Robinson, has been quoted as saying, “Playing Robert Parish is like reading a book, ‘How to Play Center.’ ” The Lakers’ Vlade Divac said after the game the other day, “I learned something tonight.” Something they don’t teach in Belgrade.

The Celtics are sometimes recognized around the league as yesterday’s team. But as long as their Double-0 is standing in the pivot, they are as dangerous as they have ever been, for one night, one week or one series. Their winning record, 34-22, is a tribute to Parish as much as anybody on the squad.

With a front five well over 30, someone noted, “The Celtics are winning on memory.” More likely, they’re winning because they went to the right Parish for it.