Dominique Wilkins values his wars with Larry Bird, Celtics

Dominique Wilkins values his wars with Larry Bird, Celtics



Sunday, February 8, 2015
By:  Steve Bulpett

The Hawks will be in town Wednesday, and that means another visit with Dominique Wilkins and another round of stories from the old days.

The Human Highlight Reel has always been fun to engage in conversation, and he’s become a fabulous repository of NBA war tales.

His greatest battles seemed to be fought with the Celtics and Larry Bird, the culmination being their shootout in Game 7 of the 1988 Eastern Conference semifinals.

But ’Nique revels, too, in his earliest meetings with Bird, going back to his own rookie season of 1982-83.

“One of the first times I ever played against him, I went out for the opening tip and I went to shake his hand. He just stood there and looked at me stone-faced with his hands behind his back,” Wilkins said recently.

“I was like, ‘Whoa.’ Then we were getting ready for the tip and he says to me, ‘You don’t belong in this league, Homes.’ I couldn’t believe it, but it happened so fast, I didn’t know what to think.

“Then they had the ball and I was on him and he said, ‘I don’t know why they got you guarding me, Homes. You can’t guard me.’ Then, whap, he hit a 3. Then he came down again and said, ‘They made a mistake putting you on me, Homes,’ and he took another 3.”

Getting into the story, Wilkins began to act things out with his facial expressions.

“So now I’m hot,” he said. “I’m hot. I mean, I’m steaming.

“Then a little while later, I came down on a break and he was backpedaling. I just went right after him. I jumped up and he tried to challenge, but I took that right through the rim. He fell and hit the basket support.

“He got up and said, ‘I like you, rookie. You’ve got(guts).’ I was happy for a second, and then he said, ‘But I’m still going for 40 on you tonight.’ ”

He then paused the story, stepped back and smiled.

“But I got him,” Wilkins said. “He only scored 39.”

If you expect that Wilkins would carry a bit of bitterness toward Bird and the Celtics after all these years, you don’t know ’Nique. He carries those moments, even the bad ones, as a badge of honor.

“Let me tell you something: I wouldn’t trade that for nothing in the world,” Wilkins said. “You know why? Because those guys like Larry and Doc (Julius Erving) and Bernard (King), they made you a better player.

“You know, if you didn’t have the heart, you got destroyed.”

Wilkins proved he had the heart time and again, and never was that more evident than on May 26, 1988.

Wilkins went for 47 points that day. Bird had 34, but 20 of those came in the last quarter as the Celtics held on for a 118-116 victory. (Doc Rivers, incidentally, had 18 assists for the Hawks that day, and Rivers’ future boss, Danny Ainge, led the Celts with 10 dishes.)

The C’s advanced to the Eastern Conference finals, where they lost to Detroit, while the Hawks went home. But Wilkins, known mainly until then as a dunker and general athletic wonder, earned a different look from basketball followers.

“I think that was the one game that made people notice my total game,” he said. “Actually it was because of that whole series. Before that, people just saw me as the guy who did the highlight dunks.

“But when we were walking off the floor after that last game, Larry came up to me and said, ‘We both deserved to win this game. It’s unfortunate that one of us got to go home.’

“That was big respect, and I’ve always appreciated that.”

It wasn’t the last time Bird would offer him consolation.

“Larry and I talked after our careers were over,” Wilkins said, “and one thing he said to me that I’ve really thought about is, he said, ‘’Nique, you guys were good. But at that time, you were just too young to win.’

“And he made a good point. We were a very young team. We had a couple of veteran players like Tree (Rollins) and (Dan) Roundfield, but mostly we were young. And that was a serious veteran team that the Celtics had. Five Hall of Famers on one team.

“What are you going to do with that? How could be beat that?”

This week’s
C’s timeline

Wednesday vs. Atlanta, 7:30 p.m. — The Celts will be trying to take a positive vibe into the All-Star break by getting a victory here. But the fact the Hawks have played the best basketball of anyone in the East this season will make this an extremely difficult task for the home team. The C’s will have to apply good pressure to the ball, because, if given a bit of room to operate, the Hawks will move the rock unselfishly until they find open shots.

BRADLEY: STEVENS IS DOING ‘AN AMAZING JOB’

It wasn’t that long ago that coach Brad Stevens (right) was blaming himself for everything from the Celtics’ uninspired play to the climate change crisis.

These days he’s getting credit from his players for better and more cohesive efforts that allowed the Celts to go 3-3 on their West Coast trip and overcome a couple of stumbles once they got home.

“It’s amazing,” Avery Bradley, who has long preached greater reliance on the coach, said during the upswing. “I feel like everyone’s putting trust in Brad.

“I feel like he does an amazing job every single day preparing us. Whenever you have a coach that can prepare you for every single game and you just have to go out there and execute the game plan, you almost feel like you’re ahead. And that’s how we feel going into every single game. It’s just our job to go out there and play with a hard effort and make sure we know what we need to get on both ends of the floor.

“I feel like we’ve been doing a better job at that, and that’s why we’ve been successful.”




bob



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Sounds like 'Nique got Bird's standard treatment of rookies. Rodman in his ghostwritten book says that the first time he played Bird, Bird would yell out, "Who's guardin' me? How come ain't no one guardin' me?" as he drained jumper after jumper in Rodman's face.


Bird would then turn to the Detroit bench and yell at their coaches, "Y'all better put someone on me or I might just have me a field day."

Yeah, Bird and 'Nique's game 7 shootout was something to behold. Just when you thought that neither player could possibly top themselves, they'd throw in an even more spectacular shot.

I'm sure Bird respected both Rodman and Wilkens--he said as much AFTER he retired. I don't like this open mutual admiration-we-are- pals displays that some players indulge in today.

Wes Unseld, when asked what he thought of Magic's and his then pal Isiah Thomas's pre-jumpball kisses on the cheek, said, "Willis Reed and I were friends but if I had tried to kiss him he would have slugged me."

I liked those days when players left their friendship with opponents off the court and just went at it.

I used to love Bird's trashtalking. He reminded me of Muhammed Ali. He'd brag about how he was going to cut out your heart then go out and do it.

One time he took on all the fans of another city. It was back in the day of best of five in the first round and Bird sat out game three against Clvd with an injury. Clvd survived to force game four at home and a chance to tie the series.

In the closing minutes wth their team having an insurmountable lead, the Clvd fans began chanting "We want Bird. We want Bird."

In the locker room, Bird told the press, "They want me. They gonna get me. They're gonna get both barrels. Anyone who says something like that don't know nothin' 'bout basketball."

With 20,000 people screaming for his blood Bird posted a typical playoff closeout game-- a triple double with something like a 35-15-12 line.

Bird in a closeout game was like a great white shark that just detected blood in the water. He'd go absolutely berserk.

When asked afterwards about the Clvd fans' reaction, Bird just shrugged and said, "I wouldn't be too happy to see me if I was them."

You don't tred on Superman's cape.