U-’Nique perspective goes

http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/celtics/2016/03/u_nique_perspective_goes



U-’Nique perspective goes


Wilkins felt, loved grit of ’85-’86 C’s

Steve Bulpett Sunday, March 13, 2016





Credit: Associated Press
SCORING MACHINE: One-man wrecking crew Dominique Wilkins goes up for a shot against the Celtics' Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson in the 1986 NBA playoffs.



Continuing the Herald’s commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the Celtics’ 1985-86 championship, we check in with Dominique Wilkins, the Atlanta Hawks star who did all in his power to get in the Celtics’ way (and others’) that season.

’Nique led the NBA with an average of 30.3 points that year, but he went for 34.7 in six games against the Celtics, his fourth-most punished opponent behind San Antonio, Washington and New Jersey.

“That was a hell of a team,” Wilkins said of the Celtics group that many still claim is the best single-year club in league history. “A hell of a team. One thing I love about what they had was that they had what I call the ultimate competitors. Every night, somebody was going to come at you, but you’d never know who it was going to be that night. So it was a very hard team to defend. Very hard. And, believe me, I know. They were difficult to guard.

“Those teams were unmatched. I don’t know if ‘great’ is the right word to use with the teams they had back in those days. If I didn’t get 30 or 40 a night against them, we couldn’t win, period. I mean, they were super teams.”

Wilkins would have to guard Larry Bird, while having to score against Kevin McHale and the Celts’ approach to team defense at the other end. He acknowledged Dennis Johnson and Robert Parish and even Danny Ainge (“When you think about it, he was pretty much underrated for what he would do,” he said). But ’Nique has a hard time anointing the C’s over the Lakers as top one-year team.

“There were similarities when you looked at the Celtics and the Lakers, but it came down to who was going to outcompete who,” he said. “Nobody really had a clear edge. The edge was Larry Bird and Magic Johnson. It was the two guys.

“The Celtics were unstoppable in ’86, but the Lakers went through the same thing where they had to add a couple of people just to keep up. You cannot win without veteran players. You can’t. I thought the Celtics in that year were easily the best team in that season. But you look at the back-to-back championships the Lakers won, and they were just so much better than everybody those two years.”

Asked to get off the fence, Wilkins hedged some more.

“The best team I ever played against? Boy, that’s a good one . . .” he said. “You know what? I’d go East Coast-West Coast. In the East, it was the Celtics because they had so many players. They had Hall of Fame players. They had more Hall of Famers on that team than any team in the East. They were bringing a Hall of Famer (Bill Walton) off the bench. But if you look out West, it was the Lakers.”

This week’s
C’s timeline

Tuesday, at Indiana, 7 p.m. — The Celts will be looking to even the season series against the Pacers. Indiana took the first two back in November, but when the C’s took the Pacers down on Jan. 13, it began the Green’s rise from (literally) a .500 team. The Celts had gone 20-7 since, heading into the weekend, and they have a nice break before this game, while Indy has a Saturday-Sunday trip to Dallas and Atlanta.

Wednesday, vs. Oklahoma City, 7 p.m. — Sure, the Celtics will get a chance to test their mettle against some Western Conference iron here, but, as a side matter, this will be the local fans’ only chance to express their affection for Kevin Durant, who will be a free agent this summer. We’re expecting some interesting signage from the Garden crowd.

Friday, at Toronto, 7:30 p.m. — Heading into the weekend, the Raptors hadn’t quite wrapped up the Atlantic Division title — for whatever that’s worth — but maybe more important is that the Celts just need to find some success against these guys. Toronto has beaten the C’s by six and 10 points this season, with two more to go. Should the East standings remain steady in the first three positions, the Celtics would be looking at a second round series against the Raptors if both defeat the lower seeds in their opening series.

STEVENS SEES CHANGES FOR THE BETTER — AND NEED FOR MORE

Some interesting thoughts from Brad Stevens last week as relates to both strategic and emotional issues with his team.

The Celtics coach discussed a switch that has seen more three-guard/ballhandler lineups, saying, “I think the biggest thing is it gets Isaiah (Thomas) off the ball and we can run some of our stuff that we like to run for him. . . . (It takes) some of the need off of him to always have it. And the more that we can do some of that stuff and get better with it, the better. If he’s always starting with the ball and he’s at the top of the key in a pick-and-roll without any movement prior to it, it’s a lot to ask of a guy for an extended period of time. You can do it for four, five, six minutes at a time, but you can’t do it multiple times throughout the game. So the more we can get him off the ball the better; that’s really the focus. And I just think the more ballhandlers you have, the better. Our turnover numbers have been pretty good. . . . From a percentage standpoint we’re turning it over at a pretty reasonable rate.”

Stevens also addressed the poise question.

“I think any time things are going against you that gets tested in a big way,” he said. “It’s not a secret that we are way better when we are making plays as a team and moving the basketball when you start looking at our assist numbers and correlating that to our success or lack thereof. And then it’s not a secret that we’ve got to do a much better job of keeping teams off the foul line in those games. You look at it and really it’s been a tale of two types of games . . . since the All-Star break — those in which we’ve been pretty solid and kept the other teams off the foul line and those in which we haven’t. We’ve just got to do a better job of managing all that. I think that’s probably par for the course with a lot of teams. And you’re going up against the best of the best in the East, and it’s a good learning experience for us.”



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