Sixers playoff flashback: World B. Free takes over Game 7 and sends Celtics packing

With the NBA playoffs on hold because of the coronavirus pandemic, here are some memorable 76ers playoff games dating to when they moved from Syracuse before the 1963-64 season. Is your favorite missing? Send feedback to Marc Narducci at mnarducci@inquirer.com.

Second of 12 parts.

With all the high-profile players the 76ers assembled during their impressive run from the late 1970s to the championship year of 1982-83, World B. Free always said he belonged with the best.

He admittedly never met a shot he didn’t like.

“I was one of those guys who you feel you are always going to make the next one,” Free said, laughing, in a recent interview. “I never let a miss bother me.”

The Sixers drafted Free in 1975 in the second round, 23rd overall, out of the NAIA’s Guilford College. That was a memorable draft for the Sixers as they also selected high school center Darryl Dawkins in the first round, fifth overall. Free and Dawkins became fast friends with the Sixers.

Pat Williams, the Sixers’ general manager who drafted Free, attended Wake Forest with Guilford coach Jack Jensen.

“Jack said to me to take him because there would be times he will drive you crazy but also times he defies description and does sensational things,” Williams said in a recent interview.

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It was on May 1, 1977 that Free indeed did sensational things. In his second year, he came off the bench to score 27 points as the Sixers defeated the Boston Celtics, 83-77, in the deciding Game 7 of their Eastern Conference semifinal seres.

The Sixers went on to beat the Houston Rockets in six games in the Eastern Conference finals before losing to Portland in six games in the NBA Finals.

Played at the Spectrum, that Game 7 with the Celtics was a knock-down defensive struggle. Boston outscored the Sixers, 14-12, in the fourth quarter. But it was not enough to offset Free’s performance.

The 6-foot-2, 185-pound Free hit 10 of 27 shots from the field and all seven of his foul shots. He played 26 minutes, meaning he hoisted up more than a shot a minute.

He was defended primarily by 6-3 Jo Jo White and 6-5 Charlie Scott, who were eventually inducted in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

“I remember in that game I was posting up Jo Jo White, and guards really didn’t post guards back then,” Free recalled. “I was like jumping over [them] shooting my jump shot. But that was my game.”

In addition to having trouble guarding Free, White and Scott shot a combined 10-for-38.

Williams, now working with a group trying to bring major-league baseball to Orlando, said that, even as a second-year guard, Free was a matchup nightmare.

“He could jump over anybody, so you couldn’t guard him because he jumped so high,” Williams said. “Jo Jo or any-sized guard was at this mercy. Even though [Free] was 6-2, he could elevate so high, get his shots off, or he could drive around you.”

While Free missed 17 shots in the game, he had good company in the brick department. The Sixers starters -- Julius Erving, Doug Collins, Henry Bibby, Caldwell Jones, and George McGinnis -- shot a combined 17-for-53 (32%).

“It was more of a defensive battle because [it was] back then. The game was so physical. And in the playoffs, they let you really get physical,” Free said. “You could actually knock somebody out. And if you didn’t get up, they put somebody else in there and carried you off the court.”

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Free said hand-checking was allowed in those days, making it more difficult to score. If he had played that game without hand-checking?

“I would have scored twice as many points,” he said, laughing but also serious.

“I remember John Havlicek telling me at the end of the game, ‘You are going to be a beast, young fella’ ”

That was only Free’s second playoff series. The first came in 1976, when the Sixers lost, two games to one, in an opening-round series to the Buffalo Braves.

So, his first best-of-seven series was against the Celtics, continuing one of the great sports rivalries. As carefree as he was then, Free still realized that the atmosphere in Game 7 was clearly different from before

“I felt the pressure. This was just my second year,” said Free, who was inducted into the Small College Basketball Hall of Fame on Oct. 31. “I always wanted to play against the Boston Celtics because you grew up hearing about the mystique of Boston Garden and all those great players.”

He wanted to make a name for himself in this rivalry, and what better way than to star in Game 7?

“I wanted to put a little imprint on it, so I wanted to play and play my best in that game,” said Free, who has been the 76ers’ ambassador of basketball for the last 21 years. “And you had a national TV audience. It was on ABC back then.”

After watching that Game 7, Williams remembered what Free’s college coach said about his ability to do sensational things.

“That Game 7 was one of those instances,” Williams said. “Lloyd Free was absolutely fearless.”

That was before he changed his name to World B. a few years later.

“He never met a shot he didn’t like or wouldn’t take, and it’s too bad the three-point line wasn’t around then, because he would have feasted on it,” Williams said.

Free became a career 33.7% three-point shooter, but the rule didn’t get to the NBA until his fifth season.

During that seven-game series, Free averaged 15.3 points against the Celtics while coming off the bench. For his career, Free averaged 21.2 points in 44 regular-season games against the Celtics.

He played only one more playoff series against Boston, averaging 26.5 points in four games as Free’s Cleveland Cavaliers lost, three games to one, to the Celtics in an opening-round series in 1985.

Something about facing the Celtics got his juices flowing.

“They always say [former Sixers guard] Andrew Toney was the original Boston Strangler. No. I was,” Free said.

What really made that series special, Free said, was that future Hall of Famer John Havlicek, playing his second-to-last season with the Celtics, pulled Free aside afterward.

“I remember John Havlicek telling me at the end of the game, ‘You are going to be a beast, young fella,’ ” Free said. “Coming from him, that meant so much.”

Free spent his first three years with the Sixers before being traded in October 1978 to the then-San Diego Clippers for a 1984 first-round pick that the Sixers used to select Charles Barkley.

Free played 13 NBA seasons, ending with a career scoring average of 20.1 points, and, as Havlicek predicted, become a scoring beast on the court.