The Jim Ard Interview
By:
Michael D. McClellan
|
Monday, May 2nd, 2005
He played in the league with that red, white and blue ball, teaming with the great Rick Barry and doing battle with the incomparable Julius Erving, but his ultimate thrill was winning an NBA Championship with Dave Cowens, John Havlicek, Jo Jo White, and the rest of the 1975-76 Boston Celtics. Game 5 of that ’76 NBA Finals will forever be known as “The Greatest Game Ever Played”, a triple-overtime heart-stopper in the fabled Boston Garden, and Jim Ard, pressed into duty following the disqualifications of Cowens and Paul Silas, stood tall when his team needed him most. From winning the tip in that third overtime to canning the decisive three-throws in what would be a 128-126 nail-biter, Ard proved himself a worthy middle man in the Celtics’ bid to gain control of the series. Anonymous to many, especially to those outside of Boston, Ard’s spirited play in the final five minutes helped the Celtics capture that all-import Game 5 – and, in the process, take a 3-2 series lead back to Phoenix for the championship clincher. How big was that win? Had the Suns, behind a miracle shot by Garfield Heard, the dubious officiating of Richie Powers, and the spectacular play of Paul Westphal, somehow managed to wrest control of the series by winning that Game 5 classic, Phoenix would have been playing for the 1976 NBA Championship on its home floor. Who knows what might have happened. Instead, it was the Suns who had their backs against the wall in Game 6. Demoralized and weary-legged, Phoenix proved no match for the Celtics in a must-win game. The rest, as they say, is history.
While never a star at the professional level, Ard was heavily recruited out of Thornton Township High School in Harvey, Illinois. He was a rugged big man with decent footwork and a good feel around the basket, and more than a hundred schools offered scholarships. The University of Cincinnati won out, in large part because of its storied basketball tradition. He finished his senior season by being named All-American, at which point both the established NBA and the fledgling ABA heavily courted his services. The ABA, with its lure of the bigger contract, ultimately proved too appealing for Ard to pass up. He signed a four-year deal with the New York Nets, played there for three of them, and then found himself a member of the dreadful Memphis Tams. It was during this period that Red Auerbach, ever on the prowl for talent, plucked Ard from the waiver wire. Ard was thrilled.
“It was a big moment for me,” he recalls. “In the ABA, I had a chance to play with, and against, some very special players – Rick Barry, John Roche were teammates, while Julius Erving and Dan Issel were rivals. And while the quality of play in the league was good, everything else just didn’t measure up to the NBA. So, to join a championship contender, especially a team with a storied tradition like the Boston Celtics…it just didn’t get much better than that.”
