He was on the court for less than two minutes in the third overtime of The Greatest Game Ever Played, and yet Glenn McDonald’s contributions loomed extraordinarily large on that day, as he and his Boston Celtic teammates pursued a league-record 13th NBA Championship.  Who knows what may have happened had the Celtics lost that Game 5, triple-overtime thriller, and then flown to Phoenix down three-games-to-two.  Perhaps the Celtics would have won that game anyway, and returned to Boston to close out the 1976 NBA Finals on the fabled Boston Garden parquet floor.  Perhaps another Celtic hero would have emerged, hitting clutch baskets with the game on the line in that blast-furnace of a gym, lifting the most decorated team in NBA history to another level of championship success.  Or, perhaps not.  No one knows how the emboldened Phoenix Suns would have played at home, with the luxury of a one game cushion, or how the Celtics would have responded after losing that triple-overtime epic – especially after leading in regulation by more than twenty points.  And no one knows what might have happened had the series came down to a deciding, winner-take-all Game 7 in the Garden, with a sold-out crowd roaring for the Celtics and millions more watching the drama unfold on TV.  Thanks to the timely, stellar play of McDonald, those scenarios remain the stuff of sports-crazed watering holes and Internet chat rooms.  All the seldom-used swingman did on that memorable day, in those 95 seconds, was put the Boston Celtics on his back and carry the team to a 128-126 penultimate Game 5 victory.

The only triple-overtime game in NBA Finals history has been well-chronicled through the years, celebrated to the point of mythology and marketed to a whole new generation of NBA fans.  Boston, with its rich tradition and star power – John Havlicek, Dave Cowens and Jo Jo White were household names at a time when the league was struggling to broaden its fan base – entered the series as the prohibitive favorites, while Phoenix arrived with brash determination and little else.  Games 1 and 2 belonged to the Celtics, with the young Suns unable to match Boston’s veteran intensity.  Phoenix answered in Game 3, riding the play of Paul Westphal and rookie center Alvin Adams to a 105-98 victory and keeping its comeback hopes alive.  An 109-107 Suns win in Game 4 evened the series, sending it back to Boston 2-2 for the pivotal Game 5.  That is where the most improbable championship game in NBA Finals history unfolded, a bizarre series of events that set the stage for McDonald’s beautifully unscripted heroics.

The Greatest Game Ever Played started as if it would be one of the biggest blowouts of all time, as the Celtics raced out to a 32-12 lead with just over nine minutes played in the first quarter.  Few could have expected the Suns to climb back – especially in the stifling din otherwise known as Boston Garden – but Phoenix, young and blissfully ignorant to the Celtic Mystique, continued to chip away at the lead.  With the halftime deficit at 15, Celtics head coach Tommy Heinsohn railed at the officiating – as he had for most of the first four games in the series – and then headed to the locker room to blunt the Sun comeback.  The adjustments, however, did little to change the momentum; Boston scored just 34 points in the entire second half, while Phoenix maintained its composure and fought back to tie the game, 95-95, at the end of regulation.

The teams traded baskets in the first overtime, scoring six apiece, and a second overtime session appeared inevitable.  With time draining away, Boston forward Paul Silas signaled to official Richie Powers for a timeout that the Celtics didn’t have.  The gaffe could have – some say should have – cost the Celtics the game.  Powers, however, failed to acknowledge Silas’ signal, and no technical was called on the play.  Time ran out, and the Phoenix coaching staff angrily stalked after Powers, to no avail.  The Celtics and Suns would play on.