Michael Jordan’s ‘The Last Dance’ documentary did exactly what everybody was expecting: remind us all why he’s the greatest player of all time. As a matter of fact, it didn’t take him long to convince other NBA legends that he was, indeed, something the league had never seen.
Jordan led the Bulls to the playoffs in his second season despite missing 64 games that year. However, his reward was nothing short of spectacular, as he had to face the 66-16 Boston Celtics featuring Robert Parish, Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge, Dennis Johnson, Bill Walton, and Larry Bird.
The Bulls were easily beaten in the first game of the series, but Jordan wasn’t going to go down easy. He went golfing with Ainge the day before game 2 and told him to warn Dennis Johnson about what was coming.
Needless to say, the Black Cat delivered as per usual and got Johnson and Walton in foul trouble all game long en route to a whopping 63 points. Still, it wasn’t enough to get past the Celtics, who hung on to a 4-point triumph, but it was definitely enough to get Larry Bird’s attention:
“I think it’s just God disguised as Michael Jordan,” Bird told the Boston Globe back in the day, and he doubled down on that words during his interview for ‘The Last Dance’, adding that he was something he had never seen before on a basketball court.
This Day In 1986: MJ scores 63 against the Celtics in Game 2 of the first round of the playoffs. Leads Larry Bird to say his famous line after: “I just think it’s just God disguised as Michael Jordan.” pic.twitter.com/zcfpjuCHWY
— Darren Rovell (@darrenrovell) April 20, 2020
Jordan just couldn’t be stopped that day. He looked for contact, shot 18 free throws, knocked down threes, and had some of the most acrobatic, circus-freak kind of finishes the league had seen. Also, he took down Elgin Baylor’s record for the highest-scoring game in playoffs history, and this was just during his sophomore year.
Still, the Celtics were just too much to handle vs. a one-man team and Michael had to wait a little longer before finally thriving in the playoffs, but that’s the day he definitely put the world on notice about what was about to come.
