1987 Overview
From Hoopedia
1986-87 NBA Season
It was the season of the rubber match and the blazing star.
The Celtics and Lakers had each won three NBA championships in the 1980s, delivering for fans everywhere a cross-country showdown featuring two immensely popular players, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson.
Even better for the league, there was a growing subplot—the starburst of Michael Jordan. Not since Wilt Chamberlain’s exploits in the early 1960s had the NBA seen such individual scoring brilliance. Jordan tore through the league with a vengeance, scoring 3,041 points for a 37.1 average, marking the first time a player had eclipsed the 3,000-point mark since Chamberlain in 1962-63.
“I had to be the igniter, to get the fire going,” Jordan said. “So a lot of my individual skills had to come out.”
Thirty-seven times that season, Jordan scored 40 or more points. Eight times, he ran up 50 or more. During late November and early December, he scored 40 or more points in nine straight games, six of them coming on a Western road trip.
January and February brought another flurry of big nights, prompting fans to cast a record-setting 1.41 million All-Star votes for a player sportswriters had begun calling “His Royal Airness.” “I think it’s great the fans admire my style so much,” Jordan said. “I’m not going to do anything to disappoint them.”
After winning the All-Star Slam Dunk Championship, Jordan scored 58 points against the Nets, breaking Chet Walker’s franchise regular-season record of 57. A few days later, despite a painful corn on his left foot, he blasted the Pistons for 61 in an overtime win before 30,281 at the Pontiac Silverdome. “I don’t know how he did it,” teammate John Paxson said. “Every night someone else was standing in his face, and he never took a step back.”
Aside from Jordan, the player who had been asked to do the biggest job for his team was Magic Johnson. As Kareem Abdul-Jabbar approached 40, Lakers coach Pat Riley asked Magic to take on more of the scoring load. Johnson responded by averaging a career-best 23.9 points per game while still leading the league in assists (12.2 ).
The Lakers won 65 games and devastated the competition in the West, going 11-1 in the Western Conference Playoffs on the way to a showdown with Boston.
The defending champion Celtics won 59 games, but injuries to Bill Walton and Scott Wedman decimated their bench. As a result, Bird, Robert Parish, Kevin McHale and Dennis Johnson each played more than 37 minutes per game and Danny Ainge played 35.
Boston showed fatigue while being extended to seven games by both Milwaukee and Detroit, though the Celtics still advanced to the Finals for the fourth straight year. But the rested Lakers jumped out to 2-0 lead, living up to their “Showtime” aura.
Boston won Game 3 behind a 30-point effort from Bird. Game 4 came down to one sequence. With the Lakers trailing 106-104, Abdul-Jabbar was fouled, made the first free throw and missed the second. But the rebound was batted out of bounds and ruled Lakers’ ball. Johnson took the inbounds pass on the left side and considered a 20-footer, but McHale came out to prevent that. So Johnson drove into the key and was met by McHale, Bird and Parish. Magic lofted a hook shot over Boston’s tall trio and when the shot found the net, the Lakers led by one. With two seconds left after a timeout, Bird somehow got open for a jumper, but the shot rimmed out. The Lakers had stolen a game in Boston and would eventually win the series in six games back in Los Angeles.
“You expect to lose on a sky-hook,” said Bird later. “You don’t expect it to be from Magic.”
