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In today's classic Larry Legend shit-talking story:
http://www.bostonherald.com/sports/celtics_nba/boston_celtics/2015/02/dominique_wilkins_values_his_wars_with_larry_bird_celtics
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?”
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