Larry Bird’s ‘God Disguised as Michael Jordan’ Quote: The Game That Changed How Fans Saw MJ

He finished with 63 points in a 135-131 double-overtime loss, shooting 22-for-41 from the field and 19-for-21 from the free-throw line. He also added six assists and five rebounds, and he did it in 53 exhausting minutes. At the time, those 63 points broke Elgin Baylor’s single-game NBA playoff scoring record, and that record still stands.

The crazy part is that Jordan was not doing this against some average defense in a random April game. He was doing it against Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and a veteran Celtics team that knew exactly how to turn playoff games into street fights in sneakers. Boston still needed 36 points, 12 rebounds and eight assists from Bird just to survive. The Bulls pushed the game deep into overtime, and Jordan kept answering every big Celtics moment with another bucket, another drive or another trip to the line.

Bird’s comment makes more sense when you remember that Jordan had already put 49 on Boston in Game 1. So from the Celtics’ point of view, this was not one random eruption. It was two straight playoff games where a 23-year-old guard looked like the best athlete and toughest shot-maker on the floor against the league’s measuring-stick team. Bird was basically admitting that Boston had thrown everything at him and none of it mattered.

Why the quote changed how people looked at Michael Jordan

Jordan was already a star before that night. After that game, he felt inevitable.

That is the real reason the quote has lasted. When an all-time great like Bird says something like that, people listen differently. It was one thing for fans in Chicago to believe Jordan was special. It was another for the best player on the best team in the league to sound almost stunned by him. In hindsight, Bird’s line became one of the earliest public stamps of approval on Jordan’s future greatness. That is an inference, but it is backed by how often the game and quote are still revisited in NBA history and retrospectives about Jordan’s rise.

It also helped shape the way Jordan was remembered in defeat. Normally, a first-round loss gets filed away pretty quickly. This one did not. The Bulls were swept, yet the series is still part of Jordan mythology because Game 2 made clear that championships were probably coming eventually. He had not built the full legend yet, but the outline was there — the scoring bursts, the fear factor, the sense that even elite opponents were just trying to hold on.

The Celtics still got the last word that season

As unforgettable as Jordan’s performance was, Bird and the Celtics finished the job the way champions do.

Boston completed the sweep of Chicago, rolled through the Eastern Conference and went on to beat the Houston Rockets in six games to win the 1986 NBA title. The Celtics finished that season as champions, with Bird also taking Finals MVP. That ending matters to the story because it reminds you just how high the bar was. Jordan did not drop 63 on a good team that flamed out later. He did it against the eventual champs.

That is why the anniversary of Bird’s quote still resonates. It captures two truths at once. Boston was the team of that season, and Jordan was the player of the future. The Celtics raised the banner, but Bird’s line helped announce that the league’s next defining superstar had already arrived.