YouTube Gold: Dominique Wilkins On Recent Larry Bird Criticisms

In the recent past, a number of people have questioned Larry Bird’s greatness. This goes against what a number of his contemporaries have said, including Xavier McDaniels, Isiah Thomas, Michael Cooper, Michael Jordan, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson, all of whom have talked about Bird’s greatness.

You can add Dominique Wilkins to that group.

Wilkins and Bird had some phenomenal duels when Bird was a Celtic and Wilkins was a Hawk and, clearly, Wilkins has not forgotten.

He has some harsh comments here about Dennis Rodman, who very early in his career disparaged Bird and now says that if Bird played today, he’d probably be in Europe.

Wilkins calls Rodman delusional and says that Bird could play in any era and that “today’s players could not handle him...period.”

He then goes on to rip former Blue Devil and current media figure JJ Redick, saying “he’s stupid” for his recent comments about Bird. Wilkins points out - correctly - that today’s NBA is not nearly as physical as it was in the ‘80’s. There’s really no debate about that. Today’s game is much more of a finesse game than it ever was back then. He goes on to say that “for JJ Redick to say that is the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard.”

He concludes by suggesting that a lot of what motivates people now is getting their social media likes up, and there may be some truth to that comment too. We’re not saying that specifically about Redick and we’re not sure we’ve ever seen Rodman near social media, but it makes sense as a general cultural criticism.