Kite Soared. Sort Of.
Celtics had their final game of the season, a nice win over the Knicks heading into the playoffs. Doc rested *all* the regulars and even some of the semi-regulars … meaning many fans paid more than $200 to see lots of Avery Bradley, Troy Murphy and Sasha Pavlovic. (Bradley, who had scored just 32 points the entire season, had a career-high 18 points). I used to love the last game of the year during the Real Big Three glory years — mostly because it meant that my all-time favorite bench guy, Greg Kite, would get to start. Kite didn’t play much (197 minutes his rookie year, which is almost as long as I’ve been procrastinating on a PR plan tonight) and when he did, his stats weren’t glowing (88 points vs. 84 fouls for all of the 1984-1985 season), but hey, in Boston, we love our big,lumbering white backup centers. In fact, a photo of Greg Kite was the centerpiece of a “here’s my personality” photo montage project I did for junior year health class. The picture of Kite (I think it was one of Kareem posting him up, most likely casually flicking a sky-hook over his shoulder moments after the Chief or McHale limped off the court for a short respite) was meant it to illustrate that, like Kite, I was a hard worker willing to do whatever it took to get the job done (which is funny, given how relatively lazy I was in high school). But it really just said, hey, this guy’s favorite Celtic sucks. (Which reminds me of an exchange a buddy of mine had with me in 1987 or so — Him: “You remind me of Brad Lohaus.” Me: “Because I’m big and can stick the three?” Him: “No, because you are ugly and uncoordinated.”) So back to Kite starting the final games of the 1984 and 1985 seasons (his only start in either year). In Kite’s rookie year, he had 13 points in the final game of the season vs. the Nets (including a pair of lefty hook shots). The following year, he had 14 points, also against the Nets. I believe that Darryl Dawkins was the victim of Kite’s offensive outbursts both years, which just proves that by 1984, Darryl Dawkins really sucked. The sad part is that I knew all of those facts without having to look them up (I did head over to basketballreference.com to verify, but they don’t have box scores for 1984 and 1985), yet I often forget how old my sons are. Kite’s finest moment was probably in the 1987 NBA Finals Game 3, captured in the video above — he came off the bench for 10 rebounds and a vicious block of a Magic layup (at 7:13 on the video). He also had … well, he had 0 points too.
