Antoine Walker is a native Chicagoan and like every great hooper from the area in the post-Michael Jordan era, His Airness played a large role in influencing Walker's love of the game. But unlike every kid from Chicago, Walker actually got the chance to go toe-to-toe with MJ. Walker was the No. 6 overall pick in the 1996 NBA Draft and was poised To be the face of the Boston Celtics rebuild.
With current Iona head coach Rick Pitino in his first year as President of Basketball Operations and coach of the Celtics, he was tasked with leading his young team to victory in the 1997-98 regular-season opener against MJ and the reigning champion Bulls. In his second year, Walker was ready to break out and be a bonified 20-point per game scorer and it started on that night. The Bulls had a lineup of Ron Harper-MJ-Jason Caffey-Toni Kukoc-Luc Longley with Scottie Pippen out, as detailed in The Last Dance.
Despite this, Chicago went into the second quarter leading 32-12. But Walker was on fire from the field. He scored 31 points on 50% shooting and chipped in big-time on the defensive end with 8 rebounds, 5 steals, and 2 blocks. In an interview with the Boston Herald, Pitino said that he remembers the infamous win fondly and still has a framed copy of the boxscore, a gift from his wife Joanne.
Walker broke out his infamous "shimmy" and the young Chicagoan had no idea what he had just done. Pitino stated:
"... the assistant coaches explained to me that apparently Antoine was shimmying and dancing, and Michael [Jordan] started screaming, ‘Antoine, you won’t be (expletive) dancing when you come to Chicago."
Jordan vowed to get revenge on Walker and the Celtics and, of course, in true GOAT fashion, he did. The Jordan-led Bulls beat the Celtics by an average of 14.6 points per game over the next three meetings. It was a valuable lesson learned for Walker and Pitino remembers Jordan's drive and determination to this day:
"There’s two guys you never wanted to piss off — don’t say anything, don’t make them angry: (Larry) Bird and MJ,” he says. “You just didn’t want to piss either one of those guys off, because it would always come back to haunt you."
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