1958 St. Louis Hawks vs. Boston Celtics Game 6 NBA Championship Program

This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 5/14/2016

The 1958 NBA World Championship Series pitted the Western Champion St. Louis Hawks against the Eastern Champion Boston Celtics. The Hawks won the series in six games to become National Basketball Association champions for the first and only time.

After suffering a heartbreaking loss to the Celtics in Game 7 of the 1957 NBA Finals, St. Louis survived rough times in the 1957-58 NBA season, coming back to the NBA Finals to face the Celtics once more. The teams split the first two games and were tied 49-49 in the third game when the series' decisive play occurred. Bill Russell soared high to block a shot by Bob Pettit, landed heavily on his right ankle and collapsed in a heap on the floor with a severe sprain. He missed the next 2 games. Boston won just one more game, the fourth, as the Hawks gained revenge with a six-game series victory that gave them their first and (to date) only NBA championship.

Here are the results of the 6 game NBA finals

Game	Date	Home Team	Result	Road Team
Game 1	March 29	Boston Celtics	102–104 (0–1)	St. Louis Hawks
Game 2	March 30	Boston Celtics	136–112 (1–1)	St. Louis Hawks
Game 3	April 2	St. Louis Hawks	111–108 (2–1)	Boston Celtics
Game 4	April 5	St. Louis Hawks	98–109 (2–2)	Boston Celtics
Game 5	April 9	Boston Celtics	100–102 (2–3)	St. Louis Hawks
Game 6	April 12	St. Louis Hawks	110–109 (4–2)	Boston Celtics

With a little more than 20 seconds to play, Pettit drove on Russell, stopped and arched a shot over the clawing grasp of the Celtic captain for the basket that gave the Hawks a 108-105 lead. But Tom Heinsohn made two foul shots with 16 second left to cut it to 108-107. With the Boston defense converging on Pettit, Slater Martin tried a set shot that missed, but Pettit somehow fought his way through the mob of Celtics around him to tap the ball in and make a final Celtic field goal meaningless. Pettit had scored 50 points, including 18 of the Hawks' final 21 points and gained sweet revenge from the Hawks' 1957 NBA Finals loss.

We are proud to offer the only program we’ve ever seen from this NBA final championship game played on April 12, 1958. We’d grade this program an overall EX – NR MT, has some notes and scoring on page 3 which was an advertisement, no missing pages, tight binding, and a period April 12, 1958 stamp on the cover of the program (the Hawks were known for date stamping their programs, regular season or otherwise).This program is SUPER RARE!