CLEVELAND - Chicago Bulls basketball was never the same after Michael Jordan joined their awful team in 1984. For Jordan, he wasn't ever the same after a historic afternoon in Boston in 1986.That is when he became a basketball immortal.
Jordan, wearing his familiar uniform number 23 broke a 24-year old NBA Playoff record in Game 2 at age 23 by scoring 63 points 23 years ago today in the nearly impenetrable force field known as Boston Garden, a hoops mecca that saw the 1985-86 edition of the home team roll to a glittering 40-1 home mark in the regular season.
He was simply smashing.
It occurred to me earlier that MJ had been a premeditated assassin that day. Indeed, after netting 49 points in Game One, Jordan came out "guns" ablazin' and became a relentless marksman, a shooter without a conscience and no regard for his "victims." As it turns out, his "victims" were wowed by his slithering moves even as he evaded their grasp only to "knife" through rotating defenders en route to nearly scoring an unlikely heist; a Bulls victory in Beantown.
Almost.
Jordan, who was only in his 2nd pro season had suffered a stress fracture in his foot three games into the season, causing him to miss 64 games. Chicago was a putrid 21-43 in those games but saw a glimmer of hope to make the playoffs as the lowest seed when the super hoopster returned in Mid-March. That means that it took him less than five weeks to ascend to the level that he played at in Boston.
Wow.
Though the briefly stunned Celtics won the game, 135-131 in double OT, the series and eventually, the NBA championship, Jordan made an indelible impact on the sports world and his legend continued with its meteoric rise in the coming years.
And even though he didn't kill the Celtics that day, he should've been arrested for assault, battery and attempted murder.
But he got away with it! Lucky us!
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