Larry Bird -- Savior for Section 80

Section 80 never changes much. This year, like last year and the one before, the kid with the ankle weights showed up. He can palm the ball now, and his goofy smile is a little more abashed; but he still wears the ratty junior high basketball jacket. The old guy, who once reffed college ball and now depends on the bottle in his paper bag, was there too--and the brothers from Roslindale who help run the union during the day.

For the last three years, they've come to Boston Garden almost every night, come to jeer Curtis Rowe and Sidney Wicks and to watch Celtics. They've kept coming because its the only show in town for a basketball fan, and because they've always come, and at the very least they can watch great players wearing opposing unifroms destroy the listless Celts.

But mainly they kept returning because Celtics basketball is an organized religion, with 13 green-and-white icons hanging from the Garden roof and a list of saints, identified only by the kelly-green number that they once wore, dangling from the skylights. And in this dimlylit, age-crusted catacomb, the faithful wait for the NCAA to part with a titanic saviour, someone with arms long enough and stats big enough to rescue the team. After all, except for the last few years the Celtics have always been basketball's chosen people: you can forgive their fans for hoping.

Last year, Section 80 had a name for its hope--Larry Bird, a 6-ft. 9-in. human caricature with a ready-made nickname (and a scraggly blond head of hair.) The Celtics had him hooked before he began his senior year at Indiana State; and the fans, between obscenities aimed at Wicks, talked of little else. While the Celtics had the most wretched year in their history, Bird dominated the Sporting News, leading his little-known Sycamores to the national college finals.

Friday might, he stepped onto the puke-green floor-boards of Boston Garden for the first time. The few hundred fans on hand an hour before gametime cheered his first warmup jumper, and each arrival in Section 80 got the news.

"He looks good." "God, is he big." "God, is he ugly." "God can he leap/pass/shoot."

By 7:30, gametime, the Garden is packed for the first time since patron saint John Havlicek's number was retired in ceremonies last year. This year's rite is just as impressive. "And now, the starting lineup for the Boston Celtics. "From Indiana State"--ROAR--and for the next three minutes, Section 80 and the entire Garden stand up and yell. Someone rushes to the baseline and releases a pigeon, a real nice gesture except that the bird quickly disappears in the bowels of the scoreboard.

Larry Bird, a farmer's son from French Lick, Ind., doesn't even crack a smile. He just scores the first hoop of the year for the Celtics, and follows it up seconds later with a full-court lob that catches M.L. Carr with two strides to go to the hoop. Fans go wild, Bird makes a few more spectacular passes, and then he sits down. He isn't the standout, not until the next night in Cleveland when he sinks 12 of 17 shots and scores 28 points. But nobody is disappointed Friday --at least not in Section 80. The guy with the bottle stayed awake most of the game, not dissolving into dreams of his college ref days until midway through the fourth quarter--when it's all wrapped up. The brothers from Roslindale only swear at the refs. And the kid with the ankle weights stops smiling and starts messing up his hair.