In another year and another Sixers-Celtics Game 7, the Artist Formerly Known as Lloyd Free was determined to make a name for himself.
One of ‘em, anyway.
He is known now as World B. Free. Has been since December 1981, when he legally changed his name midway through a 13-year run as a freewheeling, shoot-first-and-ask-questions-later NBA guard.
For the last 27 years Free, now 72, has served as the Sixers’ Ambassador of Basketball, making appearances throughout the Delaware Valley and on game nights glad-handing
fans in every corner of Xfinity Mobile Arena.
But in the spring of 1977 he was still Lloyd, a second-year backup seeking minutes and shots on an ill-fated Sixers team headlined by Julius Erving, George McGinnis and Doug Collins. And Free was accorded both in the deciding game of an Eastern Conference semifinal set against Boston.
The game, which was played in the Spectrum, proved to be a rock fight. The Sixers shot 33 percent from the floor, the C’s 30 percent. The second half, in which Philadelphia outscored Boston 33-32, was particularly brutal, and the boxscore reflects the individual futility.
Erving shot 6-for-19, McGinnis 4-for-13 and Collins 3-for-11. Boston’s Jo Jo White was 7-for-24, while John Havlicek went 4-for-19 and Dave Cowens 5-for-16.
Free? He scored 27 points off the bench. And the Sixers won, 83-77.
“Lit ‘em up, yeah,” Free recalled as he breezed through a court-level corridor before Game 6 of the current Sixers-Celtics series. As always he was wearing a snazzy suit and a stylish hat. As always he was greeting the paying customers who bustled past, some of them by name.
“It was,” he added, “an unbelievable night — like, you know, I couldn’t miss. I couldn’t miss a shot. I went crazy on them.”
Here his memory betrayed him. He put up 27 shots, and made just 10. But the game went a long way toward earning him a nickname — “The Boston Strangler” — that was passed on to another Sixers guard, Andrew Toney, a few years later.
Free is OK with that.
“I’m not really talked about the way a lot of people are talked about,” he said, “even though I had the same kind of game. It’s good the way it is.”
He came to the Sixers as a second-round pick in 1975, from the Brownsville section of Brooklyn via Guilford College, an NAIA school in Greensboro, NC. On the NYC playgrounds the 6-foot-3 Free had been known as the “Prince of Mid-Air” because of his leaping ability. Also “All-World,” which in time would lead to his name change.
He believes his background prepared him well for the rigors of the NBA.
“Oh yeah, because I’m a street basketball player,” he said. “I’m from the streets. We played physical like that. Always played with older people that beat me all the time back there. So this was nothing when I came into the league.”
During that 1976-77 season he averaged nearly 22 points a game against Boston in four regular-season meetings, including a 36-point game. In the first six games of their playoff series, he scored at a 13.3 point-per-game clip.
The Sixers would go on to beat Houston in the Eastern finals, but fell to a Bill Walton-led Portland club in the Finals. And after the next season — a season in which Free again averaged over 20 a game against Boston, and 15.7 overall — he was traded to the Clippers for a 1984 first-round pick.
The Sixers used that pick, which was fifth overall, on Charles Barkley. And Free in the meantime got all the shots he wanted, not only with the Clippers (who were then in San Diego) but later the Warriors and Cavaliers as well. He even drifted back to the Sixers for 20 unproductive games late in his career, but overall he averaged over 20 a game for his 13 seasons, and at the time he retired his 17,955 points were 40th all time.
These days he appreciates the talent and tenacity of the Sixers young guards, Tyrese Maxey and VJ Edgecombe, and can only hope they have a full understanding of the challenges that arise this time of year.
“Playoffs, it’s such a different game, because everything slows down,” Free said. “More physical. You can get away with murder, but you have to adapt yourself every game.”
Especially Game 7. The one in 1977 is one of just two the Sixers have won against Boston, in eight tries. The other came in ‘82, when Toney scored 34 and Erving 29 to save the Sixers in a series they once led 3-1. That is also the last time Philadelphia beat Boston in a series of any length, having dropped the last six, three since 2018.
Now the question is, who makes a name for themselves Saturday night? And from which side? Because World B. Free knows all about such things — how reputations can be established and memories made. And how those things remain indelible, no matter how many years pass.
