The Celtics opened the 1986 postseason facing the Chicago Bulls and their second-year star, Michael Jordan.
Jordan did all he could for the Bulls, scoring 49 points in Game 1 and besting that with 63 points in Game 2 at the Boston Garden. But even so, the Celtics swept the Bulls in three games in the best-of-five series.
After Jordan’s Game 2 performance, Larry famously said, “God was disguised as Jordan.”
The Celtics went 11-1 in the playoffs before they reached the championship round. Their only lone loss was Game 4 of the conference semifinals against the Atlanta Hawks.
After taking a 3-0 lead in the series, the Celtics fell 106-94 in Game 4 as Dominique Wilkins scored 37 points.
“We lost the game in Atlanta, and they were talking some smack,” McHale recalled to NBC Sports Boston.
However, the Celtics had the last laugh in Game 5, outscoring the Hawks 36-6 in that third quarter and turning it into a rout.
“I forgot we had done stuff like that,” McHale said. “We just wiped them off the face of the earth.”
The 1986 playoffs marked the third time in four years that the Milwaukee Bucks advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals, but it would be their last appearance until 2001.
The Celtics avenged their 1983 Eastern Conference Finals sweep against the Bucks by sweeping the Milwaukee in four games for the 1986 Eastern Conference championship.
