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Even on grainy TV footage from 40 years ago, James Worthy is still phenomenal.
Scrolling through my cable TV guide, I saw that the NBA Channel was carrying the 1984 Finals: Lakers vs. Celtics. So I clicked to see one of the greatest playoff games of all time.
This was Game 4 at the old Forum in Los Angeles. The Lakers had two Tar Heels on their roster, second-year power forward Worthy and eighth-year center Mitch Kupchak, whose injury-plagued career was nearing an end for a job in the Lakers front office.
Worthy was in his second season in the NBA and already one of the best players in the league. He had missed the end of his rookie year in 1983 with a broken leg, which is why Dean Smith insisted Big Game James enter the NBA draft after he led UNC to the NCAA championship as a junior. The Lakers had the first pick, and Smith was worried that Worthy would get injured again if he came back to school and hurt his draft position.
Early in that season, a fully recovered Worthy had displaced local UCLA star Jamaal “Silk” Wilkes in the starting lineup and became the power forward to NBA Hall of Fame center Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and a low-post target for point guard Magic Johnson. The Celtics had the great Larry Bird and front-court mates Kevin McHale and Robert Parish.
The Lakers had won Game 1 at the old Boston Garden and won Game 3 in LA to take a 2-1 lead in the series. They led Game 4 almost all the way, although it was a one- or two-possession thriller for most of the fourth quarter. McHale missed a tip-in at the end of regulation and the game went into overtime with Abdul-Jabbar having fouled out.
In his first full season, Worthy became the go-to guy as the Lakers tried to hang on and not let the series go back to Boston tied at two games apiece. In overtime, Worthy scored 12 of his team’s 14 points, scoring nine straight that gave the Lakers a five-point lead before the Celtics battled back to win on a steal and dunk by former Guilford College star and future Celtics coach and general manager M.L. Carr.
Worthy had taken his game to another level in the NBA and could score on the block and with turnaround jumpers from the baseline. Although the Lakers lost the series in seven games, Worthy went on to become a seven-time all-star, three-time world champion and was MVP of the 1988 NBA Finals. He was named to the NBA’s 50th and 75th anniversary team and his No. 42 jersey was retired after his last season with the Lakers in 1994.
His No. 52 at Carolina hangs in the rafters of the Smith Center as the National Player of the Year and MVP of the 1982 NCAA Final Four. The Gastonia native still lives in California but comes back to the Tar Heel State and Chapel Hill regularly.
Featured image via Todd Melet
Art Chansky is a veteran journalist who has written ten books, including best-sellers “Game Changers,” “Blue Bloods,” and “The Dean’s List.” He has contributed to WCHL for decades, having made his first appearance as a student in 1971. His “Sports Notebook” commentary airs daily on the 97.9 The Hill WCHL and his “Art’s Angle” opinion column runs weekly on Chapelboro.Chapelboro.com does not charge subscription fees, and you can directly support our efforts in local journalism here. Want more of what you see on Chapelboro? Let us bring free local news and community information to you by signing up for our newsletter.
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