COMMENTARY : Wilkins Is Still Carrying Hawks

You don’t get better at 33 years old, not in basketball, not in the NBA. You hold on, you hope not to lose a step, you pace yourself, pick your spots. Gravity, invariably, pulls your game down, especially if you’ve ruptured an Achilles’ tendon at 32. If you’re really healthy and uniquely talented and quite lucky, it might be the last year of your prime. You’re thinking about maintaining respect, going out gracefully, not reshaping your game and being the centerpiece of a rebuilding team that may be two years from championship contention.

You hear the same four names over and over for MVP of the NBA: Charles Barkley, Hakeem Olajuwon, Patrick Ewing and Michael Jordan. And you’ll get no argument here. But perhaps an even more amazing story is that of Dominique Wilkins, who 11 years into his NBA career is having his best season.

I’ll be the first to admit, I thought Wilkins was done as a player who could carry a team in the playoffs, who could still hold his own in such signature NBA postseason confrontations as the one he narrowly lost to Larry Bird in Game 7 of the 1988 Eastern Conference semifinal at Boston Garden. The Atlanta Hawks forward, it seemed, had become an afterthought, a wonderfully entertaining but second-tier all-star who never won as big as he or we thought he should.

Now this. It’s stunning, really. A whole lot of players don’t come back at all from a ruptured Achilles’ tendon. If he’d come back averaging 20 points a game and kept the Hawks out of last place in the Central it would have been more than anybody had a right to expect.

Instead, he’s had a career year in every measurable way, tangible and intangible. His 30.1 scoring average is the third highest of his career, but we always knew he could score. But Wilkins has even managed to average seven rebounds a game and 3.2 assists. A guy who went zero for 11 from three-point land back in 1984, when he had no jump shot to speak of, has worked on his shooting to the point that he made a club-record eight three-point field goals in a recent game at Milwaukee. He’s playing perhaps the best defense of his career and has been the bedrock of what used to be a fractured Hawks locker room. “I’ve never felt more relaxed, never felt stronger, never felt more focused on what we’re here to do,” he said.

As a direct result, the Hawks are in good shape to make the playoffs. Without Wilkins, the Hawks are the Bullets.

It’s given no small measure of satisfaction to a man dogged with the reputation of being a loser, of being selfish, of not being a hard worker. The irony is, you don’t come back from a ruptured Achilles’ tendon without being a fanatic worker who’s dedicated to the very unselfish cause of helping a team. So how do you get better at 33? How does your entire game jump a level 11 years into the league?

“I’m 33, they said I ought to be in a rocker,” Wilkins said. “I certainly think this proves people wrong. There’s more to it than age, like whether you’re dedicated, whether you have a work ethic, how insistent you are. I’m still young.” He also was quick to admit he didn’t think he’d be able to play this way after the injury forced him to miss the second half of last season. “No, I didn’t. I thought I could play, but how well, I just didn’t know. What I wanted to do was reach a level of consistency in every area, but not decline or slip in certain others.”

Even so, it’s hard to imagine the Hawks beating New York, Chicago or Cleveland in the first round of the playoffs, which would send Wilkins home early again. And for that, his reputation will suffer even though it’s obvious anybody who goes deep into the playoffs has to run with at least one other all-star. Jordan, remember, had a lot of early golf dates until Scottie Pippen and Horace Grant matured. As Hawks center Jon Koncak told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Sunday, “We have never had another guy of ‘Nique’s caliber, let’s face it.”

For that very reason Barkley forced the 76ers to trade him. Wilkins has been quiet, internalizing whatever frustration he was feeling at management’s inability to acquire all-star caliber players. Instead of saying he wants out, he has gone out of his way to say he wants to stay in Atlanta and win there.

“Everybody’s different,” he said of his approach as contrasted with Barkley’s. “I believe you should try to ride out the ups and downs in life. So I just tend to keep everything to myself. I’m a very positive person. The criticism has hurt, yeah. But I’d rather be here, do the best I can every night, play as hard as I can, and hope we can contend.”

At best, Wilkins will finish fifth in the MVP voting. My choice is Olajuwon, narrowly over Barkley. If you ask me tomorrow, I could go the other way. The Rockets have won a club-record 54 games, including a club-record 24 on the road. The NBA’s longest winning streak of the season (15 games) belongs to Houston. Olajuwon’s 26-point average is a career best, as are his 3.5 assists per game, his 78 percent foul shooting and his minutes played.

Barkley, who has changed the whole presence of the Suns while sacrificing some of his own game, is easily as deserving. His team, after all, has the best record in the league. You don’t have to work hard to make the case for Ewing and Jordan. As Wilkins said, “You can vote for Michael Jordan every year.”

It’s likely all four of those players will be playing in June, in their respective conference finals. It’s likely Dominique Wilkins will be watching and hoping that the work and pain he endured this season will produce more chances like the Game 7 in Boston Garden five years ago. “You know who I’d vote for?” Wilkins said. “I’d vote for Hakeem. Seriously, you take him away from that team and what have you got? He’s the kind of guy that you never appreciate fully; you never know what you’ve got until he’s gone.” The same words just as easily describe Wilkins, little as it’s known.