1988 NBA Playoffs: McHale was Magic before Bird Took Over

5/23/1988

He set the tone in the first minute, when he took a pass from Larry Bird and went in for a reverse layup with nobody home. Kevin McHale had played bumper pool from the low post before, kicking the ball back out instead of trying to fight through traffic. But not yesterday. Not in a seventh game in his own building.

"I wanted to come out aggressive," McHale said, after he'd played a monster of a game against the Hawks -- 33 points, 13 rebounds, 4 blocks -- within arm's reach of the basket. "Play as hard as I can down low. Take as much paint as I could. Go to the hole, go to the hole, go to the hole."

So he did, carrying the Celtics into the fourth quarter before Bird took over. McHale had more paint around him than Monet. Any time you looked yesterday, he was working the lane for layups, turnarounds, baseline drives, spinners, flip hooks and tip-ins off rebounds. All of it in the spare moments when he wasn't chasing Dominique Wilkins from one end of the Garden to the other.

"That's the hardest I've ever worked on a guy that scored 47 on me," cracked McHale, who matched Wilkins point-for-point for much of the day. But McHale took it out on Kevin Willis and Antoine Carr at the other end. He had 11 points at the quarter, and 21 by halftime on 8-for-10 shooting, most of it unstoppable.

"My game is to take the ball to the hole and make things happen," McHale said. "Eventually, they're going to foul you."

So the Hawks did, just to keep McHale from reaching a career high by halftime. He proceeded to make 13 of 13 from the line, including two big free throws that made it 109-105 just before Bird's three-pointer.

You could talk about Bird and Wilkins and their stunning game of H-O-R-S-E down the stretch, matching each other shot for shot. But the primary reason why Boston won this game was because nobody was matching McHale.

"Kevin was consistent all the way through," said Celtics assistant coach Jimmy Rodgers. "And not only was he scoring points, he was guarding Dominique."

McHale could have taken the passive route, setting up low, waiting to be double-teamed, then kicking the ball back outside and letting his teammates swing it. "I can do that every NBA game of my career," McHale conceded. "But it's not my game."

This game (10 of 14 from the floor) was only one short of McHale's career playoff high for points, and he managed them despite spending 43 minutes going chest-to-chest with Wilkins and sticking hands in his elusive face.

"One time Dominique went up in the air and hit nothing but net," McHale mused, "and I was all over him. Another time, the ball went so high I thought it would hit the top of the backboard. Still another time he jumped up from nowhere, like one of those things you crank -- de-de-de-de-DE-DE-de-de, then the head pops up. I said, 'Whoa!' "

McHale spent the day scrambling, fighting through arms and legs to stay with Wilkins, who took more than a third of Atlanta's shots and made 19 of 33. "The ones he made weren't easy ones," said Rodgers. "Kevin was making him work."

Both men had 31 after three quarters, when Boston had an 84-82 lead. "Then Larry got that look in his eye," McHale said. "The one that says, 'Get the hell out of my way, boys, I'm going to go to work.' "

So Bird went at Wilkins at the Hawks' end. But McHale had to deal with the man on the return trip. "They were back and forth, back and forth, back and forth," said McHale. "Like two gladiators out there, banging away. Unfortunately, I was guarding one of them."