Michael Jordan set the record for most points in a playoff game in the 1986 NBA playoffs. He poured 63 points for the Chicago Bulls in Game 2 of the first-round series against the Boston Celtics, and nobody came close ever since. According to Kevin McHale, MJ’s scoring outburst happened because the league-leading Celtics were overconfident they could handle the lowly Bulls. After seeing Jordan get hot, however, they had to dig deep.
“K.C. Jones said we better double-team that guy because he’s a lot better than we thought he was,” McHale told Dan Patrick at the Dan Patrick Show. “He had 49, I think, in the first game, and honestly, I tell people all the time, we barely game-planned for Chicago. They had like 30, 33, 35 games in the regular season. We had won 67.”
“We kind of went in there and said, ‘Okay, let’s just run our stuff. Let’s take care of what we gotta do. Let’s just be us, and we’ll be fine. We’ll do some stuff to Michael; we’re not gonna double-team him. After that, in Game 3, we were all like, ‘Okay, gotta game plan this guy,'” said the Hall of Famer.
Wary but confident
Jordan’s performance caused Larry Bird to utter the all-time great quote: “That was God disguised as Michael Jordan.”
Mike was on fire, hitting 12-of-22 on pull-up jumpers, 8-of-14 on drives to the basket, and 2-of-5 on other shots, per ESPN. Just about every Celtic took a shot at him, including five Hall of Famers, and he scored a field goal against all of them except for Rick Carlisle.
“He obviously was in a zone. He kept them in the game with big basket after big basket. We couldn’t stop him,” Bird said.
Even after witnessing Jordan’s offensive eruption, McHale personified Boston’s confidence going into Game 3. Now armed with a scheme to contain the Bulls’ shooting guard, the “Black Hole” brought nothing but toiletries when the team traveled to the Windy City.
“In Game 3, I remember coming in there and everybody was all upset because I brought a Dopp kit. I didn’t bring any clothes. I was like, ‘We’re playing one game and we’re gone.’ They were like, they almost beat you in an overtime game, and I was like, ‘Nah, we’re gonna hammer these guys, and we’re gonna go home. The media made a big thing about me bringing a Dopp kit, no clothes on the road. They said, ‘What are you gonna do if you lose?’ Then, I guess I’d smell bad,” the Hall of Famer recalled.
Getting the job done
As McHale noted, the Bulls’ regular season record had no business going up against the mighty Celtics. Chicago only won 30 games that year, as Jordan only played 18 games because of a fractured foot that only partially healed in the postseason. Still, MJ put on a show in the first two games, dropping 49 in Game 1 and a volcanic 63 the next.
When Game 3 came around, the Celtics already knew what to do.
“We double-teamed him almost every time and said, ‘Man, we gotta get the ball out of this guy’s hands. So yeah, we shut him down a little bit. I tell you what, I knew he could really play. I just didn’t know he was that explosive. I was kind of startled when Michael started blowing up and just being a damn near unstoppable force on the offensive end,” McHale stated.
MJ finished with a near triple-double, scoring 19 points while grabbing 10 rebounds and dishing nine assists. However, it’s clear that Boston’s game plan made him do something he’s not comfortable with. After a scare in Game 2, the C’s blew out the Bulls, 122-104, to advance to the next round.
Jordan’s historic Game 2 proved that you can’t take anyone for granted at the sport’s highest level. The Celtics quickly realized that even a championship-caliber team had to adjust to contain a force like Jordan.
