Gifts That God Didn't Give

The image of the dummy, the hick, is one more thing that Bird uses to his advantage, like his jump shot or, more to the point, his head-fake. "Like I tell people," he says, "I'm not the smartest guy in life, but on a basketball court I consider myself an A plus. Not that I'm dumb. I can keep up with 90 percent of the people in this world. I just don't explain myself to people. I want to keep 'em guessing. The way they take me is the way they take me."

This is the way to take Bird: He is the most complete basketball player to come along since Oscar Robertson. Bird may not be the best player—at least he doesn't think he is—but no one playing the game today can do as many different things on a court as well as Larry Bird. The year before he joined the Celtics, 1978-79, the team won 29 games, lost 53 and finished last in the NBA's Atlantic Division with the second-worst record in the league. In that season, Bird, averaging 28.6 points and 14.9 rebounds, led Indiana State from obscurity to 33 straight victories and the NCAA finals. In 1979-80, his NBA Rookie of the Year season, Bird averaged 21.3 points, 10.4 rebounds and 4.5 assists; led the Celtics to the NBA's best record (61-29); and carried them to the Eastern Conference playoff finals, which they lost to Philadelphia. Last year Bird averaged 21.2 points (he scored four fewer points than in 1979-80 over the 82-game season); upped his rebounding average to 10.9 and his assists to 5.5; led the Celtics to a 62-20 record, tying them with the 76ers for best in the NBA; and then averaged 21.9 points, 14 rebounds and six assists in the playoffs as Boston won its 14th NBA championship. Bird finished second to Philadelphia's Julius Erving in the balloting for the league's most valuable player.

When you thumb through basketball history to find the one player who could score, rebound, pass, play defense, lead a team and—this is Bird's greatest gift—see the court better than all others, your finger stops first at Robertson, the great guard for the Cincinnati Royals and later the Milwaukee Bucks. But then it continues, past Havlicek, past Rick Barry, past Erving, past Jerry West, past Earvin (Magic) Johnson even, and comes to rest at Larry Bird.

At 6'9", Bird, who plays forward, is four inches taller than Robertson, but height would seem to be Bird's only natural advantage over Robertson or anyone else for that matter. Bird looks like a soft, fleshy adolescent. He is slow as NBA players go, and in the words of an NBA scout—not the only one who thought Bird would be a mediocre pro—he suffers from "white man's disease." That is, he can't jump. How, then, can Bird be so great? "I would say my vision, my court awareness and my height are God-given," Bird says. "Everything else I've worked my ass off for."

Work—at least work on a basketball court—is what Bird loves. It has been that way ever since he was old enough to dribble a basketball up and down the hilly streets to the playgrounds of French Lick. Ind. Because his two older brothers, Mark and Mike, generally dominated the ball and the neighborhood games, Larry had to wait his turn. And when he got the ball—late at night or early in the morning, when no one else wanted to play—he would usually take it to the park by the old high school and work by himself for hours on end, just as he does now. Nothing else mattered to him but mastery of the ball and the game to which it belonged. When Bird gets into a game with four other players, his greatest gift—his court awareness—makes that unit work. He performs as though he not only sees everything as it develops, but also as though he sees everything before it develops.

"Larry is the best passing big man I've ever seen," says Celtics President Red Auerbach, who coached nine NBA championship Celtic teams and has been around the NBA since 1946. "Barry was damn good, but he wasn't in a class with Bird. This guy is unique. He's like a Bob Cousy up front, and Cousy, without question, was the greatest passer who ever played the game. Larry will probably go down in history as one of the great forwards of all time, if not the greatest."

Says Havlicek, "What Larry does doesn't surprise me because our minds think alike. When I watch a game I know what should be done, but 99 percent of the time it isn't. When Larry's in there, 99 percent of the time it is." Says Bird, "When my teammates get open I hope to God I can get 'em the ball. If you don't get 'em the ball, you'll tell 'em you seen 'em but it was too late. I don't know how many times last year I'd cut right down the middle and [Cedric] Maxwell would pass the ball a second before I was open. And he'd come right to me and say, 'My fault, I missed you.' It just carries over. And I know I might have started that. When you get that going, it means that everybody's always looking for the open man, and that's all they care about. The other teams better watch out."

What most impresses the people who know Bird—from his few new friends in Boston, to those in Terre Haute, where Indiana State is located, to the French Lickers who have known him since he was an itty-bitty thing with a basketball under his arm—is that nothing has changed him. Not the celebrity. Not the money—$650,000 per year. Nothing. The quintessential team player in the quintessential team game still wears blue jeans and baseball caps, and he still derives a third of his pleasure from being alone with a basketball and a goal to shoot at. Another third comes from being part of a team. "I've never known another player who is so loyal," says Celtic Kevin McHale. "If you're Larry's teammate, you're one of the most important people in the world to him." The rest of his pleasure comes from winning, mowing his lawn, drinking beer, hunting squirrels, fishing, playing golf, and being with friends and family. Those who know Bird have a saying: "That's Larry." And they always say it smiling.

"If I say Larry Bird is the best player," Celtic Guard Tiny Archibald comments, "people say, 'He's on your team, that's why you're saying that.' I still say he's the best all-around player. He does more things for us than any other player does for his team." Other Celtics echo Archibald's sentiments. Chris Ford: "Larry is a living textbook of basketball." Fitch: "I call him 'Kodak' because his mind is constantly taking pictures of the whole court."

Bird used to crawl into the nearest corner when people said such things about him. He would look down at his feet and, without thinking, mumble whatever words came first—anything to get these stupid questions over with and let's play ball. But during last year's playoffs Bird was the Celtics' most eloquent spokesman—after Fitch.