Bitter NBA Rivalries Now Mostly a Sweet Memory

Sixers-Celtics. Celtics-Lakers. Pistons-Bulls.

There was a time when their meetings were anticipated for weeks and even months. Players saved their sharpest elbows and scariest glares for their biggest rivals.

The men who played those games remember them with a certain fondness.

Retirees like Kevin McHale, who saw the end of many years of the Boston-Philadelphia rivalry and the 1980s version of the long-standing Celtics-Lakers battles, bemoaned the absence of rough games late in his career.

“I liked it better when we hated each other,” said McHale, noting the luster is gone from the game when players have the same agents, wear the same shoes and make commercials together.

Dominque Wilkins said the way opponents treat each other has changed in his 12 years in the NBA.

“It used to be that veterans wouldn’t talk to you,” Wilkins said. “Larry Bird wouldn’t talk to me my first year. He just stared at me when I tried to shake his hand. Guys like Larry, Julius Erving, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Bernard King really made you earn their respect. You had to be ready to play every night.”

Wilkins said it’s different today.

“I’m friends with a lot of guys on other teams,” he said. “But once you tip off, there are no friends. That hasn’t changed.”

The best recent rivalry was Detroit and Chicago. The Pistons beat the Bulls in the Eastern Conference finals in 1989 and 1990 before Chicago turned the tables in 1991 by beating Detroit en route to the first of three straight NBA titles.

“Those years were tough, but fun,” Scottie Pippen said. “We played the game the way it is supposed to be played. But we finally learned we didn’t have to have bad blood to beat them.”

The best rivalries of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s are dead now because the only thing that sustains a great rivalry is great teams. When the competition dies, so does the rivalry.

Consequently, the best games today are between Chicago and New York or Seattle and Phoenix. It’s no coincidence that these four teams met in last year’s conference finals.

“The Bulls-Knicks games are just as intense this year as last year, even with Michael Jordan gone,” Patrick Ewing said. “They’re the defending champions and they have what we want.”

Horace Grant, another veteran of the years when the Bulls and Pistons were bitter rivals, said no game today “will ever compare with that. But I’m not really sorry to see them go. In rivalries like that, you get Bill Laimbeer shots and Rick Mahorn elbows. I’m a physical player, but I don’t want to have to wear pads or helmets.”

Phoenix guard Kevin Johnson said today’s best rivalries might not be as tough as in past years because different teams are rising to the top.

“It takes four or five years to build that tradition of a great rivalry,” Johnson said. “There’s been a changing of the guard in the NBA. We’re starting to build a real tough rivalry with Seattle, but it takes time.”

Echoing Wilkins, Johnson said, “I don’t want to see kissing between opponents before the game, but I don’t see anything wrong with being friends afterward.”

“Good teams make rivalries,” Johnson’s teammate, Charles Barkley, said. “The Celtics and Lakers are still rivals, but it’s not as big because the teams aren’t as good. When teams are bad, you can’t hate each other as much. You just feel sorry for each other.”

Barkley was in Philadelphia when the 76ers-Celtics rivalry was still strong.

Asked if the two teams hated each other, he said, “Hate is too strong a word. In those days, Larry Bird would tell me I couldn’t stop him and I would say he couldn’t stop me, but there was no vindictiveness between us. Now there’s something evil in the trash talking.”