CHICAGO –

This is the fourth installment from Hall of Fame writer Sam Smith's new book "There Is No Next: NBA Legends on the Legacy of Michael Jordan."

Michael Jordan played perhaps the most impressive playoff game anyone has ever seen, in a series against what many regard as the greatest team ever, the 1986 Boston Celtics with four of the five starters in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame.

It would be a propitious moment for Jordan in grabbing the basketball world's attention, that this man was worth stopping to watch. The Bulls and Jordan went into the Boston Garden for Game 1 and Jordan scored 30 points in the first half. The Bulls trailed by two points after halftime before losing 123-104. It was merely the first strokes.

Game 2 was the masterpiece, regarded by many as Jordan's greatest game ever, though not making the top because the Bulls lost 135-131 in double overtime. Boston threw everything it had at Jordan without any success. Jordan scored a playoff record 63 points, shot 19 of 21 free throws, and 22 of 41 from the field. He had six assists, five rebounds, three steals and two blocks.

He made a steal at the end of regulation and was fouled and made two free throws to tie the game and had the game winner in the first overtime barely miss. It was memorable to watch Jordan dribbling between his legs and around Larry Bird, zooming past Dennis Johnson, double pumping to fake Kevin McHale, jumping over Robert Parish.

Reggie Miller: "I remember being in my dorm room and this is when the games were on CBS, Dick Stockton. I remember waking up. Late. It was UCLA, a Saturday or Sunday game and I remember just watching that game and being like mesmerized.

"I played against him at the Wooden Center. I competed against all these guys, but here I am in my dorm room watching him put on a show. I'm like, 'They can't touch him.' They could not touch him. He was thinking two and three plays before Larry Bird. He is four steps ahead of Dennis Johnson.

"How can that be? I remember watching that game and afterward saying: 'I've got to get into the gym.' I couldn't believe what I was watching. That's when I knew."

There really never has been a playoff performance like it. Celtics coach K.C. Jones would relate afterward that his players kept looking away like when a teacher wants to get an answer in class and no one wants to make eye contact. No one on one of the greatest teams ever wanted to go into the game to try to stop Jordan.

Sam Vincent: "At the NBA level and that Boston game, it was his showcase to show just how superior as a player he really was. I remember that game vividly because I was on the bench in the huddle with us and we're discussing all these different strategies on what we were going to do and witnessing none of them working.

"It was force him to get rid of the ball by trapping, put a guy up here and try to force him to drive and he would go around him. Almost everything defensively we threw at him he was able to conquer. It was like he had played all those scenarios out in his mind already and knew where he was going to go."

Magic Johnson: "People don't realize Michael Jordan was so strong — and I mean mentally and physically. He was the toughest and strongest mental and physical guy I've ever played against, besides the talent. What really blew me away was getting 60 in Boston. We said, 'Oh my goodness. You don't go in Boston Garden and score 60 on the road. You just don't do it.' And a team that was really outmanned.

"What Michael was able to do was put everybody on his back and say, 'OK, I'm going to show you that we're here to win. But also I'm going to show the league that this is what they're about to see forever.' "

Bill Walton: "We didn't know much. You know Michael had not played that year. He only played 18 regular-season games, and we had a great team and we knew we were going to win and we didn't know much about Michael at the time. So in the first game, he goes for 49 points. And so we kind of sat around the locker room — we beat them — and we're sitting around the locker room saying he'll never do that again. So the next game he goes for 63 points, an NBA playoff record to this day.

"I think we might have said, 'This guy's pretty good. Why don't we just have a strategy of let's double team Michael wherever he has the ball — 94 feet from the basket? Let's just make him pass the ball. He'll never have the ball in his hands. And let's just see what Brad Sellers, Dave Corzine can do about that.' And he had 19 points in the next game because we never let him shoot.

"Michael, above all, is a team player. And to me that's the real sadness of the Jordan legacy. All these guys who have no game try to play like Michael Jordan. And they think that Michael Jordan was about these phenomenal individual one-on-one plays. He only did that at the end of the shot clock, when he had to do it. When the team was down, when the team was going to lose. This guy was the epitome of team play, sacrifice, discipline, commitment to the team."

Larry Bird: "He didn't have the talent around him. I've seen scorers come in the league. I've seen scorers in the league when I got here. Guys that could get 40 and lose by 20. I could remember George Gervin having over 20 in the first quarter against us in the Garden and we would beat them by 30. I've seen that. So guys that just scored didn't bother me. But what I saw in him was a little bit more.

"Jordan had that competitive edge that he demanded that his players play better. He also expected a lot out of himself. You could see that early on. There is no way that when he first got in the league that he was going to beat us. No way. Because we had a team and we had a damn good team.

"The thing I remember the most (when he scored 63 in the playoffs against us) is we tried everybody on him. He made some plays early just enough to keep us off guard. When we thought he was going to take a shot, he laid off to somebody for a dunk or layup. So it kept our defense from really attacking him throughout the whole game. And he got on one of them rolls," Bird said.

"We scored a lot of points. But he was scoring every time. I've seen guys do that in regular-season games. But in a playoff game? This was a big game for us and I knew we had the best team in the league. We had a great team, but that day there was nothing else we could do. I know in the third game we said that he ain't going to beat us. We were in Chicago. We were going to double team him everywhere. We didn't care.

"You always remember him scoring the ball. I never forget one time he drove right down by their bench. I seen him and I come across and I jumped, not as high as I could but just to bother him. And when he went by me I could see the bottom of his shorts going by me and he dunked on Parish and Parish screamed at me and said, 'Why didn't you take him out?' I said I couldn't get there," Bird recalled.

"The bottom of his shorts went right across my face. That's how high he was. It wasn't like he took off from 50 feet. He caught it on a wing and took one or two dribbles and came in there. All I could see was those shorts going by me. I never seen that before.

"If you really look at the history of the league from that time, '86 probably and what he did with Nike and all that, our game just took off. The whole world was watching then. Pretty amazing what he was doing on the court. Seemed like all eyes were going from me and Magic to him."

Exhausted and harassed all over the court, Jordan had just 19 points in Game 3 and fouled out late in the fourth quarter as the Bulls lost 122-104. Yet even at his worst, Jordan missed a triple-double by one assist with 10 rebounds and nine assists in the loss.

The Bulls were done for the season, but Jordan had made his point while making his points. He knew what was best for him and he never was going to give up on a season or a game or a moment.

And if he could do this against perhaps the best the NBA had ever seen, well, were there any limits?

It was time to show the world what Michael Jordan could do over an entire season.

Sam Smith covered the Chicago Bulls for 25 years with the Chicago Tribune. He is the author of the best-selling book "The Jordan Rules."