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LARRY BIRD
During his contentious negotiations with agent Bob Woolf to sign Larry Bird, Celtics GM Red Auerbach used the pages of the Boston Globe to fire off a round. The star forward awoke one morning to discover he was the subject of a cartoon featuring an image of Big Bird, the Sesame Street character, with his own head on top of it and two bags of money at his feet. The caption read: “This turkey hasn’t played a game yet.”
Fortunately for the sake of the Celtics and the future of the NBA, a deal was reached and Larry Bird debuted as Rookie of the Year during the 1979-80 season. Auerbach had always built his teams with pride and character but by his own admission, his players had squandered the Celtics’ legacy by the end of the 1970s. It was Bird who rescued the sagging franchise and who quickly came to embody a new generation of Celtics pride. The NBA was struggling with mediocre attendance and poor television ratings before Bird and Magic Johnson came along to change public opinion about the league and transform it into a media juggernaut with international appeal.
Every element of Bird’s game was exemplary. Magic may have been a better passer, but no player was as accurate or as consistent a shooter as Bird who could complete impossible reverse lay-ups and 35-foot jumpers with equal aplomb. During the 1986-87 season, he became the first player to shoot .500 or better from the floor (.525) and .900 from the free throw line (.910) in the same year. He accomplished the same feat the following year, only with slightly better averages. He continued to average more than 9 rebounds and 6 assists each season and he was the first Celtic in history to record a 40-20 game with 42 points and 20 rebounds. Moreover, as Bill Walton noted, Bird did all of these things “without being able to jump over two pieces of paper.”
Bird also was a cunning and crafty defender with an ability to anticipate offensive moves before they materialized. With five seconds remaining in Game 5 of the 1987 Eastern Conference Finals against Detroit, he stole an inbound pass from Isiah Thomas and flipped it to Dennis Johnson for the winning layup.
Who was the better player, Bird or Magic? Eliot Kalb says good cases can be made for both men but gives the nod to Bird. Michael Jordan was a better guard than Magic, Kalb maintains, but there has never been a better forward than Larry Bird.