Boston Celtics: 5 best free agent signings in team history
By Drew Taylor
Dominique Wilkins
While Dominique Wilkins is well-known for his 11 plus years with the Atlanta Hawks, the Boston Celtics signed the Hall of Famer towards the end of his career.
Wilkins was traded to the LA Clippers in the middle of the 1993-94 regular season. After finishing 7-21 in his stint with the squad, Wilkins left Los Angeles and hit the market to sign with a new team.
That new team would be the Boston Celtics.
At 35 years old, Wilkins signed a three-year, $11 million contract with Boston. Coming off 11 straight All-Star appearances and 29.1 points per game in his most recent stint with the Clippers, it looked as if Wilkins would provide a solid couple of years for the Celtics in the late stage of his career.
At this point, however, the Celtics organization wasn’t exactly flourishing. Robert Parish, Kevin McHale and Larry Bird had all retired. The glory days were over. It looked like the organization would need to go into complete rebuild mode.
However, the Celtics decided to take a chance on an older, proven player, something rebuilding franchises don’t usually do.
Yes, Wilkins was 35, but he was coming off another All-Star appearance in 1993-94 in which he averaged 26.0 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 1.2 assists per game. And with his contract, Wilkins wasn’t even one of the 20 highest-paid players in the league. It all made sense.
Coming off a 32-50 1993-94 season, the Celtics came into 1994-95 with virtually the same roster (minus Parish plus Wilkins). Expectations were not high, even with the addition of the Hall of Famer.
With an 8-4 finish to the regular season, the Celtics miraculously finished as the eighth seed in the East with a whopping record of 35-47. On their playoff series with Shaquille O’Neal’s top-seeded Orlando Magic, the Cs kept the series close, winning Game 2 and only losing Games 3 and 4 by a combined eight points.
Throughout the 1994-95 regular season and postseason, Dominique Wilkins was relatively underwhelming. He averaged the lowest points per game since his rookie year and also posted career lows in rebounds, steals and blocks.
After his worst NBA season in over a decade, Wilkins decided to leave the rebuilding Celtics and dominate in Greece for a two-year, $7 million deal with pro club Panathinaikos.
Despite his underwhelming performance in the 1994-95 season with the Celtics, he was still the leading scorer on a playoff team, even if that playoff team lost 12 more games than they won.
Because Dominique Wilkins had only one underwhelming season (to his standards) and left Boston to dominate in Greece, he’s only an honorable mention. But it’s still pretty cool for Boston fans to say Dominique Wilkins played on their team for a year.