{"id":662803,"date":"2026-03-17T12:18:16","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T12:18:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/662803\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T12:18:16","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T12:18:16","slug":"sn-140-moments-no-114-larry-bird-steals-the-ball-from-pistons-to-give-celtics-playoff-win-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/662803\/","title":{"rendered":"SN 140 Moments: No. 114 – Larry Bird steals the ball from Pistons to give Celtics playoff win"},"content":{"rendered":"

SN 140 Moments: No. 114 – Larry Bird steals the ball from Pistons to give Celtics playoff win<\/a> originally appeared on The Sporting News<\/a>. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Larry Bird\u2019s career was full of clutch moments. His most famous one came in Game 5 of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals.<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

Bird\u2019s aging Celtics<\/a> were taking on a brutally physical and younger Bad Boys Pistons<\/a> team that was knocking on the door of their dynasty. The series was tied 2-2, and Boston looked like it was in trouble.<\/p>\n

Only five seconds remained in the game. The Pistons held onto a 107-106 lead. All that was left for Detroit to do was inbound the ball and run out some time. Bird was not about to let that happen.<\/p>\n

Isaiah Thomas, the star point guard and most reliable player on the Pistons, sprinted to grab the ball from the referee on the sideline. Thomas threw a two-handed pass over his head to big man Bill Laimbeer.<\/p>\n

Out of nowhere, Bird sprinted in front of the pass, getting an outstretched hand on it and barely corralling it inches away from the baseline. He whipped a pass to Dennis Johnson, who scored a layup with a second left to give the Celtics one of the most dramatic playoff wins in franchise history.<\/p>\n

MORE: Back to The Sporting News’ 140 Greatest Sports Moments of All Time<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SN 140 Moments: No. 114 – Larry Bird steals the ball from Pistons to give Celtics playoff win…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662804,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3773],"tags":[85111,85112,7,45,46,296,188,3860,1535,3497,6,297,1015],"class_list":["post-662803","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-detroit-pistons","tag-1987-eastern-conference-finals","tag-bad-boys-pistons","tag-basketball","tag-boston","tag-celtics","tag-detroit","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-detroitpistons","tag-isaiah-thomas","tag-larry-bird","tag-nba","tag-pistons","tag-the-pistons"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116244480427493830","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662803","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662803"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662803\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662804"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662803"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662803"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662803"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}