Rick Pitino's tenure as head coach of the Boston Celtics didn't go as well as he hoped, but he still has some fond memories of the experience.
Pitino, who coached the C's from 1997-2001, earned a victory over Michael Jordan's defending champion Chicago Bulls in his first game with Boston. Antoine Walker led the surprising Celtics comeback with 31 points en route to a 92-85 win.
But the moment that has stuck with Pitino to this day isn't anything that transpired on the court that night in 1997. Rather, it's how Jordan trash-talked Walker after the game.
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“I’ll never forget, as long as I live, we were going back to the locker room, and Michael Jordan is yelling at Antoine,” Pitino told Steve Bulpett of the Boston Herald. “He’s screaming at him and swearing at him. And I said, ‘Holy [expletive], what happened there?’
“Then the assistant coaches explained to me that apparently Antoine was shimmying and dancing, and Michael started screaming, ‘Antoine, you won’t be [expletive] dancing when you come to Chicago.’ He kept saying it, and I said, ‘Oh, [expletive].'”
Pitino didn't get to celebrate the win for too long, because he knew getting on Jordan's radar didn't bode well for Boston in future matchups with Chicago.
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“There’s two guys you never wanted to piss off — don’t say anything, don’t make them angry: [Larry] Bird and MJ,” Pitino said. “You just didn’t want to piss either one of those guys off, because it would always come back to haunt you. When Antoine got him mad in that first game, I’m saying, ‘Oh, [expletive], this puts a damper on this night, because we have to go back in there against him.’
Sure enough, Jordan and the Bulls topped the C's in each of their next three meetings. Chicago went on to win its third consecutive NBA title to wrap up a season that's the subject of ESPN's hit docuseries, "The Last Dance."
Walker relived that win over Jordan's Bulls during NBC Sports Boston's "Classic Celtics" series, though he failed to mention any "shimmying and dancing" that took place at Jordan's expense. Thankfully, we have Pitino to recall that hilarious anecdote.