We knew we were going to face each other in the finals.

In Chicago, we both made the All-Star team. Of course, if they had their own stuff, they couldвЂ™ve worn it too. It was because of what they perceived as MichaelвЂ™s arrogance in wearing his own stuff at the dunk contest. Many people think that rankled some of the established players like Magic and Isiah and that led to the freezeout. He actually wore his black-and-red warmup suit with his chains. So I told him he should wear his Nike stuff because it was his stuff. And there were really no rules for the dunk contest. Back then, unlike today, the NBA was much smaller. So what Michael and I ultimately did kind of flows out of Doc.ДЇALK: The only time Michael ever asked me a question about the dunk contest was his rookie year in Indianapolis. ThatвЂ™s who our game kind of flows out of because he was a magician. I tell people all the time that the granddaddy of us all is Dr. Rick Welts deserves a lot of credit for it.ДOMINIQUE WILKINS (Hall of Fame player current Hawks broadcaster): IвЂ™ve been to a lot of dunk contests over the years. The year before we were in Seattle and before that Dallas and Indy. McINTYRE: The weekend was a big-time event. J had a double-double tap backwards on the backboard.вЂ™ YouвЂ™d never seen those things because they werenвЂ™t on TV. The old-time players when I was just starting in the business would tell stories: вЂGervin did it where he put the ballВ in his elbow and punched it through. And they had some amazing dunk contests with David Thompson, A Train, Dr. It had just been brought back in вЂ84 in Denver. We knew we had a keeper.ДAVID FALK (agent for Jordan and Wilkins): The dunk contest in вЂ™88 was fairly recent. But he lost to Larry Nance, who dunked two basketballs-boom, boom-at the same time. He wanted to recreate the American Basketball Association slam dunk championship from 1976, which he also was involved with in Denver.

Carl Scheer was the general manager of the Nuggets in 1984.

THE BACKGROUNDД«RIAN McINTYRE (retired NBA senior vice president, basketball communications): Rick Welts, who was in charge of marketing for the NBA at the time, had the idea of coming up with an All-Star Saturday. Whether you consider what happened at the raucous old barn on West Madison Street the greatest dunk contest of all-time or not, it featured two Hall of Famers, in their athletic prime, trading dunk for dunk with contrasting styles.Д¬hicago Stadium is gone.

Tiny player dunk contest