Detroit Pistons center Bill Laimbeer punched by Boston Celtics’ Robert Parish during the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals, will forever find a place in the dirty play highlights in NBA history. And Isiah Thomas revealed why the big man never showed a reaction after being pummeled to the ground.
“No, it’s not that we didn’t like Laimbeer,” Thomas said while speaking on The Cedric Maxwell Podcast about not helping their center get back on his feet. “It’s that we were afraid of Chief.”
Thomas was referring to Parish as the Chief. “I ain’t friendly enough with him to call him Robert,” Thomas opined. “Still call him Chief, and I remember him beating up Laimbeer under the basket.”
On his part, Parish had his take on the sequence when talking to Maxwell about it years after the incident. The former added that he was shocked when he saw that none of the Pistons players came to Laimbeer’s aid when he lay on the ground after taking the hit.
“Yeah, I’m kinda looking over my shoulder so I don’t get sucker punched,” Parish added. “But as you said, no one helped him, so I don’t know what kind of message they were trying to send to him. I guess they had enough of his antics. I don’t know what that was all about.”
Usually, the response to Parish’s actions would be a royal rumble on the floor. And the Pistons, who gave hell and beyond to Michael Jordan, wouldn’t be the kind to be bullied by someone. But Thomas had his story ready, and he’s sticking to it — the Pistons weren’t keen on getting biffed by the Chief and were scared of him, even if that meant having Laimbeer take the punch and leaving him seeing stars.
Robert Parish vs. Bill Laimbeer: A Quick Flashback
Rollback to the 1987 NBA Finals, the Boston Celtics squared off against the Detroit Pistons, and the latter was looked at as the next big kings of the Eastern Conference.
Both sides entered Game 5 with the series tied 2-2, and the Pistons had a one-point lead with the board reading 107-106. It was also one of those skirmishes where Laimbeer received a dose of his own medicine.
Parish had just about enough of Laimbeer’s physical attacks. Game 3 of the series saw the center, and Larry Bird ejected when the Celtics legend threw a basketball at him for fouling him hard.
How much did Laimbeer have it coming? Parish did even get a personal foul let alone kicked out. pic.twitter.com/IUIEKSI9ZB
— Tim Ring (@timringTV) May 11, 2016
The heat didn’t seem to have dissipated, and Parish took a couple of swings a Laimbeer in Game 5, knocking him to the ground. While he did get away without a tech, he was suspended for the next game after a second review by the NBA. The game ended with Celtics going up 3-2 with a close 108-107 win.
While Detroit evened the series again, the Celtics closed out Game 7 with 117-114, courtesy of Bird’s 37-point masterclass. They eventually went on to face archrivals Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA Finals but went down 4-2 to Magic Johnson and the Purple and Gold.
All said, there’s no denying that the end of the 80s and the early 90s of the NBA were brutal by nature. The Pistons were feared, and rightly so, as they made the league pretty much a slugging tournament over basketball. Guess there were some who knew how to dish it back in equal measure, Jordan and the Chicago Bulls included.
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