Dominique Wilkins shares awesome Larry Bird trash talk story

[stb]

http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on-basketball/25063798/dominique-wilkins-shares-awesome-larry-bird-trash-talk-story

[bdm860]

Cannot picture Larry calling anybody "Homes."

Probably the game in question:
http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198304050ATL.html

[SHAQATTACK]

Nice post OP.

Yup ....Celtics have had some of the best .....KG , Pierce and Bird

[Roy H.]

That sounds like Larry, for sure.

[Boris Badenov]

Some context here. As bdm points out above, it looks like the April 5, 1983 game is the one in question. (Bird had 39 points in that game). This was Nique's rookie season.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198304050ATL.html

But, this was actually the sixth meeting of the two clubs that year. Here are some facts. (Note that rebounds, assists, steals etc. are often not available for these individual games from that era).

Game #1: Celtics victory, Bird 21 pts on 9-21, Nique 22 pts on 10-22.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198210300ATL.html

Game #2: Celtics victory, Bird 30 pts 15 reb on 9-16, Nique 8 pts on 3-8 shooting

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198212010BOS.html

Game #3: Celtics victory, Bid 10 pts on 3-18, Nique 17 pts on 7-21

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198212180ATL.html

Game #4 Atlanta victory, Bird 29 pts 16 reb 5 ast, Nique 18 pts on 8-16

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198302060BOS.html

Game #5 Celtics victory, Bird 25 pts 13 reb 9 ast, Nique 12 pts on 5-11

http://www.basketball-reference.com/boxscores/198303230BOS.html

Interesting that Bird would choose that 6th game to really ratchet up the trash talking. He'd pretty much owned Nique in three of the previous games including the last two, drawn once and been outplayed once (at least going by the admittedly imperfect box scores).

[33_Larry Legend_33]

NBC's Brian Williams was the 6th man for the Hawks that year too...

[GC003332]

Here is a link to the dunk that Wilkins is talking about I believe

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D0maiZN4AGI

Anybody notice the attendance for that game 7,760

Gavin

[spikelovetheCelts]

Here is a link to the dunk that Wilkins is talking about I believe

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=D0maiZN4AGI

Anybody notice the attendance for that game 7,760

Gavin

I was one of them there. I was blessed to have Hawks season tickets then. Great fun!!!!

[jambr380]

Definitely my two favorite players of that era (Bird was first, by far, though) - always loving hearing stories like this.