“When Michael started calling the ball, he would tell him to (expletive) go away,” former Bulls assistant coach Johnny Bach said of Ainge at the time. “Sometimes we need that.”
Jordan and those old Bulls are all the rage after this week’s Ring of Honor ceremony. As we relay here, Jordan was not in attendance.
Regardless, Ainge and Jordan always had a bit of a connection, and the two played golf together the day before Jordan’s 63-point game in the playoffs. The 1986 Boston Celtics led by Ainge. (By the way, the Celtics won Game 2 and swept the series.)
Ainge was playing for the Sacramento Kings when the Bulls tried to pursue him. After leaving Larry Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and Dennis Johnson, Ainge became the Kings’ team leader and top scorer.
But those Kings were pretty bad, and both sides want to move on.
Ainge is a relentless player who refuses to back down and can shoot from deep. He played two guards, was long (6-foot-5) and occasionally led the league in free throw percentage. All of this, and his professional sports career actually began as a baseball player for the Toronto Blue Jays.
Jordan respects Ainge.
But that wasn’t the case for some of Jordan’s teammates at the time. That includes Bulls guard Steve Colter.
“Colter wasn’t strong enough to take on Jordan,” Smith wrote. “…The Bulls are looking for a scorer for their second unit, but they also need someone who can step up when Jordan often calls teammates out of the way late in games.”
The man may have been Ainge, but the deal never happened.
Instead, the Kings sent him to the Portland Trail Blazers (in exchange for Byron Irving and draft picks), and Jordan went on to play with John Paxson, Craig Hodges, B.J. Armstrong, Steve Cole and other Bulls backcourt players partnered.
But everything is still going well. Jordan and the Bulls went on to win six championships, and Ainge went on to become the head coach of the Celtics and then the Utah Jazz, a position he still holds today.
In addition, Ainge added two more appearances to the Finals on four occasions with the Celtics – in 1992 with the Trail Blazers and in 1993 with the Phoenix Suns. . Both times, Ainge’s teams lost to Jordan and the Bulls.
So maybe Ainge also wants the Bulls to pursue him harder.