This one is also about Michael Jordan, but I'll post some articles about other players and events too.
Jordan Scores 63
In 1993–94 Charles Oakley, one of the NBA’s premier rebounders, was in his ninth professional season, his sixth with the New York Knicks. But during his rookie season, with the Chicago Bulls, he played in one game he will never forget. When Oakley was asked later in his career about the game of April 20, 1986, his recollection began, “Whew, 63 points!”
It was a Sunday afternoon, and the Bulls were at Boston Garden for Game 2 of their Eastern Conference first-round playoff series against the Celtics. As he sat by his locker in the visitor’s dressing room, 30 minutes after the Celtics had beaten his team, 135-131, in double overtime, Oakley remembers reading a stat sheet for the day’s game. “I was studying the numbers by Michael Jordan’s name,” said Oakley, who had 10 points and 14 rebounds in 33 minutes of playing time. “Never had the numbers said so much in playoff history. The more I studied them, the more they mesmerized me.”
Playing 53 of a possible 58 minutes, Jordan made 22 of his 41 attempts from the field and 19 of his 21 shots from the free-throw line. He also amassed 6 assists, 3 steals, and 5 rebounds. Of his 63 total points, Jordan scored 23 in the first half, 13 in the third period, 18 in the fourth, and 9 in the two overtimes.
It was Jordan’s coming-out party, the day a 23-year-old, only in his second pro season, showed the world he could dominate the NBA like only Wilt Chamberlain did before him. Jordan went on to win three Most Valuable Player Awards and seven consecutive individual scoring titles while leading the Bulls to three straight championships. He scored 60 or more points five times during his nine-year career, but what may have been his best game ever occurred that afternoon in Beantown.
Bird: “He Was Just God Disguised As Michael Jordan”
“I would never have called him the greatest player I’d ever seen if I didn’t mean it,” said Boston’s Larry Bird after collecting 36 points, 12 assists, and 8 rebounds in the exhausting contest. Then Bird paid Jordan the ultimate tribute: “He was just God disguised as Michael Jordan,” he said. “He is the most awesome player in the NBA. Today, in the Boston Garden, on national television and in the Playoffs, he put on one of the greatest shows.”
Jordan’s 63 points, an NBA Playoff record that still stands, bettered the mark of 61 set by Elgin Baylor of the Los Angeles Lakers on April 14, 1962, in the fifth game of the NBA Finals against the Celtics, also at the Garden.
On April 17, 1986, in the opening game of the series, Jordan had scored 49 points. But it was not enough to beat the Celtics, who won, 123-104. With Jordan’s Game 1 outburst in mind, K. C. Jones, the Celtics’ coach, concentrated his next practice sessions on ways of stopping the 6-foot-6 guard. It made no difference.
“We worked on all kinds of traps, double-teams and fancy defenses against him,” Jones said. “We threw the kitchen sink at him and he still did anything he wanted against us. He was going over the top of guys like [Kevin] McHale and [Robert] Parish to get his shot off. He raised his game to another level. He was incredible.”
In his column in the Boston Globe the next day, Michael Madden wrote: “This was the best team in basketball unable to stop one player, all the Celtic starters at one time or another having to go at Jordan, singly or in a group grope at defense, much of it for naught, Jordan merely going where he pleased. It has never been done better in the history of the NBA Playoffs.
“It starts with a tease, Jordan dribbling the ball, then suddenly a dribble through his legs and next a tornado of a first step that is so quick and so long that Jordan is gone, long gone. By now his tongue is out, signaling the move, but what move and what shot? The Fred Astaire glide to the lane? The Sam Jones pullout jumper? The Elgin Baylor double pump leaner? The elegant Baryshnikov glide to the finale of a slam-bang Darryl Dawkins stuff? The repertoire of so many fine pieces.”
Among those who tried guarding Jordan was defensive standout Dennis Johnson, who later became an assistant coach with the Celtics. “There was nothing anybody could do to stop him that day,” Johnson remembered.
Jordan Misses Potential Game-Winner In First OT
Jordan’s play in Game 2 was unlike the playoff opener. Gone was the Bulls’ strategy of continual Jordan isolations, and he proved what a brilliant player he was by performing even better in the normal context of the offense than he did when 90 percent of the action was directed his way.
The game itself was thrilling. What could have been more exciting than the last act of regulation play? With the Celtics ahead, 116-114, and six seconds remaining, Jordan took the inbounds pass, juked downcourt, and heaved a three-point shot at the buzzer. The shot missed as Jordan fell, but Kevin McHale was called for a foul that even surprised Jordan.
With an incensed McHale waving his arms to incite the noisy Boston Garden crowd, Jordan sank both shots to bring his point total to 54 and send the game into the first overtime.
In OT, Jordan seemed determined to win it. After making all the spinning drives and fallaway jumpers with two or three hands in his face, all he had to do at the end of the first extra session was hit a wide-open 15-footer with the score deadlocked at 125-125. Shockingly, he missed. “It felt good; it just didn’t fall,” Jordan said after the game. “I’ll remember that shot more than the ones I made.” When Bird, who rebounded the miss with two seconds left, missed a three-pointer at the buzzer, it gave Jordan another chance to win it in the second overtime.
Many times during the physical game, Jordan had come up with scintillating baskets that kept the Bulls’ hopes of winning alive. It was no different in the second overtime. A leaning 15-foot side jumper brought the Bulls to within two points, at 131-129. Jordan’s final basket of the game, a gliding cross-court lane jumper, evened the score at 131-131 with 72 seconds left. But in the end Jordan had the record, and the Celtics the victory. It came when Jerry Sichting buried a jumper that put Boston ahead to stay. After Jordan missed a 15-footer, Robert Parish’s jumper with nine seconds left clinched the win.
“The points didn’t mean that much to me,” Jordan said after the game. “I’d give all the points back to win the game. I wanted to win the game so badly that the points don’t even signify anything, don’t even mean anything to me. It’s something maybe when I have kids, 15 years down the line, I can look back then and be happy about it.”
Two nights later in Chicago the Celtics closed out the sweep with a 122-104 victory, limiting Jordan to 19 points. He still went into the NBA record book for most points in a three-game playoff series, with 131.
A Bad Break For Jordan And The Bulls
It was a series in which Jordan, at his best, made up for lost time. In the third game of the season, a 111-105 victory over the Golden State Warriors on October 29, 1985, he had either leaped too high or landed too hard. As his left foot landed flat on the court it could not absorb the strain, causing the navicular tarsal bone in front of his ankle to snap; Jordan limped away. “I knew it was serious because of the pain,” he said. “I could barely walk off the court because of the pain.”
Jordan had never before missed a game because of an injury, not at Wilmington (North Carolina) High School, not at the University of North Carolina, and not during his rookie season in the NBA. On December 12 Jordan’s cast was removed when an examination revealed that the bone was healing slowly. He was then fitted for another hard cast, which was removed two weeks later, a day after Christmas. In its place Jordan was presented with a walking cast.
By January 22 he was wearing only a brace. One month later, five days after celebrating his birthday, Jordan began to shoot at his alma mater, first alone, then among friends. Soon he was playing five-on-five and full-court, lifting weights, and then playing every day—“until I was exhausted,” he recalled. A CAT scan back in Chicago revealed that his foot was mending properly, and a Cybex test proved that the muscles in his injured leg were stronger than those in his right. He remained in town to watch the Bulls continue to struggle without him; with his foot feeling fine, he envisioned playing again before the end of the season.
On March 12 he requested a meeting with hesitant Bulls officials and the doctors who had been treating him. The doctors told him that there was a 10- to 20-percent chance that he could reinjure the foot. That was enough for club officials and for Jerry Reinsdorf, the owner, to advise Jordan to sit out the remainder of the season. Jordan wouldn’t hear of it. “Everyone’s talking about the 10 percent risk factor,” he argued. “What about the 80 to 90 percent chance that I won’t reinjure the foot?” Jordan came off the injury list two days later, having agreed to play only a certain number of minutes in each game.
His first game back was on March 15 against the Milwaukee Bucks in Chicago Stadium; the Bulls lost in overtime, 125-116. In one of the next four contests, which the Bulls also lost, Jordan played 51 seconds more than his allotted 14 minutes, leading Reinsdorf to publicly chastise his coach.
With Jordan gradually rounding into form, the Bulls took six victories in their final 10 games. They finished at 32-50, good for the eighth and final Eastern Conference playoff berth. Jordan had averaged 22.7 points in the 18 games since his return, and Bulls management lifted all restrictions and allowed him to play unlimited minutes in the postseason.
Michael Breaks His Own Record In 1992
The first-round matchup at Boston Garden, where the Celtics had posted a 40-1 record, was not an easy task. Boston, with its big, strong front line of Robert Parish, Larry Bird, and Kevin McHale, plus the newfound depth of Bill Walton and Jerry Sichting, had finished the regular season with a 67-15 mark, tops in the NBA and second best in the history of the franchise.
The experts predicted the series would be a romp. Instead, Jordan’s 131 points made it a series to remember, although that particular three-game scoring record no longer stands. In April 1992, as the Bulls swept the Miami Heat, Jordan scored 46, 33, and 56 points for a three-game total of 135 points.
(c)1994 NBA Properties, Inc. and/or Microsoft Corporation. All Rights Reserved.
As a follow up to that Barkley story, one from a little later in his career:
LOL! 
