Larry Bird captured the imagination and admiration of basketball fans throughout his thirteen-year career with the Boston Celtics with his trademark style of creative, intelligent, exciting, and hard-nosed play. And then, last year in his rookie season as head coach of the Indiana Pacers, he infused the team with these same qualities -- and the results were remarkable. He turned around a slumping franchise and led the Pacers to the conference finals. To finish off a great season, Bird was named the NBA's "Coach of the Year" -- quite an accolade for Bird, who had never coached before and surprised many fans with his unusual and unorthodox coaching methods.
This book is a look into one of the greatest minds to have ever stepped on a hardwood court. Larry Bird shares his inner thoughts on basketball that to date only his Celtic teammates and Pacers players have been privy. From dissecting offensive and defensive strategies to assessing the talent of NBA players; from sharing the genesis of his coaching philosophies to how he deals with today's overpriced and temperamental players, it's all there. This book is Larry Bird's basketball playbook, and it's the one book every basketball fan will want to read.
Cover design by Tom Tafuri
Cover photograph by Glenn James/NBA Photos
CHAPTER 1
On Retirement
On August 18, 1992, I announced my retirement from the Boston
Celtics.
It was one of the happiest days of my life.
You have to understand how screwed up my back was at that point. I had
been playing through back problems for almost ten years, and I just
couldn't take it anymore. The pain was relentless. No matter what I
did -- whether I was standing up, sitting down, lying down, leaning
over -- I couldn't escape it. It had completely taken over my life.
There were some days I couldn't even bend over to pick up a basketball,
never mind try to shoot one. Some nights, I had to eat dinner sitting on
the floor. Even lifting up my son, Conner, hurt so much that I had to
stop doing it. When I'm hurting, and not able to play the way I want, I
can be a pretty miserable person to be around. I don't know how my wife,
Dinah, lasted through that last season of my career, because I was in
pain all the time, which meant I was in a bad mood all the time too.
Maybe that's why when I walked up to the podium at my press conference
in the Boards and Blades Club at Boston Garden and finally said out loud
that it was over, I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted
off my shoulders. I can't tell you what a relief it was not to have to
push myself through all that pain anymore.
I can honestly say I hated basketball at that point.
As soon as that press conference was over, me and some of my good
friends, including my physical therapist, Dan Dyrek, went out and
celebrated. There was nothing to be sad or sentimental about. It was
time for me to be done.
I had known for months before the actual press conference that I wasn't
going to play anymore. When my back started flaring up in training camp,
before the start of the 1991-92 season, I knew that was probably it, but
I don't think I actually admitted it to anyone -- probably not even to
myself, really -- until January or February of 1992. I wasn't afraid of
life after basketball. It was more a matter of finishing a job. I don't
believe in giving up in the middle of anything. But it really wears you
out when you are in constant pain. I had what they call a nerve
impingement, which meant the L-4 vertebra was sitting twisted and
compressed on the L-5 vertebra, and there was a nerve trapped in between
the two. It left my spine very unstable. The bone kept pushing itself
into the nerves in my back, and it was just terrible. Dan Dyrek would
work on it so he could temporarily push the bone off the nerve, but
before long I'd be feeling that burning pain shooting down my leg, and
I'd be in serious trouble all over again.
By this time Dan had been treating me for almost a decade, and he was
really concerned about the permanent damage I might be doing to myself.
There were a whole bunch of times we had serious discussions about
retirement. We came to a compromise, and worked out a system where we'd
make decisions from game to game. Dan would examine me, and if my back
was really "hot," or agitated where the disc was, he would tell me I had
to sit out. If Dan gave me a thumbs-down, that was the final word for
that night. Neither the Celtics nor I questioned him -- most of the
time. Looking back, it was a ridiculous way to finish my career, but at
the time I just put my head down and tried to get through it.
I missed 37 games in my final season. People knew I was hurting, but
very few of them had any idea how bad it really was.
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