The 1980s and early 1990s were rife with NBA rivalries featuring many of the game’s greatest players, complete with clotheslines and throat rips and headlocks and haymakers and friends shoving friends.
The Boston Celtics, Philadelphia 76ers and Detroit Pistons spent a decade fighting for the right to face the Los Angeles Lakers in the Finals, and the heavyweight belt exchanged hands eight times between Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Julius Erving and Isiah Thomas before Michael Jordan seized control of it in 1991.
The bench-clearing brawls have seemingly subsided ever since, but fear not: Yahoo Sports and the NBA have partnered to remind you of yesteryear’s battles with a biweekly video series titled “Rivalries Reunited.” The first episode features Hall of Famers Kevin McHale and Dr. J discussing the back-to-back seven-game Eastern Conference finals split between their Celtics and Sixers in the 1981 and 1982 playoffs.
As Dr. J says, “We couldn’t have done this back in the day.”
Blame friendships forged through AAU, the Olympics, summer workouts or superteams, but for whatever reason, ever since Jordan essentially went unrivaled throughout the 1990s, superstars of this generation have had fewer heated meetings than we might have liked. Even as LeBron James’ Cleveland Cavaliers and Stephen Curry’s Golden State Warriors met in four straight Finals, they seemed more civil than spiteful. The greatest rivalry of the past quarter-century involved Lakers teammates Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal.
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