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He just loved the
game
By Jack McCallum, Sports
Illustrated
Posted: Wed September 30,
1998
It is overly simplistic to say that the fun went out of the
NBA when Larry Bird bid adieu. But a lot of it did. For as
much as Bird was described as the quintessential warrior,
the kick-'em-in-the-ass team leader who once challenged his
teammates by
calling them sissies, I always thought of him—as I thought
of Magic Johnson—as an overgrown kid who loved the
gamesmanship of basketball, loved it in a way that had
nothing to do with dollars and championships and personal
acclaim.
In that respect, one of my favorite Bird memories took
place at the 1986 All-Star Game in Dallas, the first year
that I covered the league. That was the season that the
pageantry of All-Star Weekend kicked into full gear. The
slam-dunk contest still
seemed fresh and alive (5' 7'' Spud Webb out-skied
Dominique Wilkins for the title) and the NBA was trying a
new experiment called the three-point shootout. No one was
sure whether the competition would be taken seriously by
the players and how it
would be received by the
fans.
Well, Bird took it seriously. From the moment he was
announced as one of the eight shootout contestants, Bird
gleefully talked about the competition and proclaimed
himself to be the favorite. At the time, remember, the
Celtics were on their way to one
of the best seasons in NBA history—they would finish at
67-15 and polish off the Houston Rockets in six games for
the title—and Bird was at the height of his powers,
superior to both a still-ascending Michael Jordan and a
Magic who hadn't yet acquired an
outside shot. But when Bird talked about the contest, he was
like a school kid going after the gym-class foul-shooting
record.
In Dallas, Bird approached the contest with the same kind
of intensity—single-minded yet gleeful. Obviously, he
was considered one of the favorites, but there was the
feeling that he was a little slow on the release, and that
the man to beat was Leon
Wood, a long-shooting rookie marksman from the Philadelphia
76ers. I was there when Bird approached Wood at the morning
shootaround on the day of the
contest.
"Leon," said Bird in his distinctive Hoosier
twang, "I've been watching you. Are you shooting
different than you used
to?"
"I don't think so," said Wood.
"Why?"
"I don't know," said Bird. "Something looks
different about your release. Don't worry about it,
though."
Then Bird walked away, leaving a bewildered Wood to ponder
what the greatest player in the world had noticed about his
form. Bird, of course, had seen nothing different. But you
could've stuck a fork in Leon Wood right then because he
was
done.
Later, as the shooters dressed in the locker room, Bird
stood up and announced, "All right, who's playing for
second place?" Then he went out and dusted off Craig
Hodges 22-12 in the last round, raising his finger as he
released the final ball. By the
time it went through the basket, Bird was already heading for
the sideline, mission
accomplished.
"I'm the three-point king, I'm the three-point
king," a smiling Bird proclaimed after it was
over.
Something about that competition has stuck with me through
all these years. The simple joy that Bird got out of the
contest, the elemental feeling of competition, suggested a
kind of purity to me that defined Larry Bird. And a purity
that you don't see
much
today.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum covered the
NBA from 1985 through 1993 and is the author of
Unfinished
Business, a 1991 book about the Bird-led
Celtics.
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