The Book of Basketball (3 page)

For nearly all of his first two seasons (’80 and ’81), there was a barely perceptible distance between Bird and Boston fans, a wall erected from his end that we couldn’t break through. Painfully shy with the press, noticeably unsettled by prolonged ovations, Bird carried himself like a savant of sorts, someone blessed with prodigious gifts for basketball and little else. This was a man who didn’t mind that one of his nicknames was “the Hick from French Lick.” We assumed that he was dumb, that he couldn’t express
himself, that he didn’t really care about the fans, that he just wanted to be left alone. This changed near the end of Game 7 of the Eastern Finals, the final act of a remarkable comeback trilogy against Philly. Unequivocally and unquestionably, it’s the greatest playoff series ever played: two 60-win teams and heated rivals, loaded rosters on both sides,
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two of the greatest forwards ever in starring roles, four games decided on the final play, the Celtics winning three straight elimination games by a total of four points. Everything peaked in Game 7, a fiercely contested battle in which the referees tucked away their whistles and allowed things to morph into an improbable cross between basketball and rugby. You know the old saying “There’s no love lost between these two teams”? That was Game 7. If you drove to the basket for a layup or dunk, you were getting decked like a wide receiver going over the middle. If you snuck behind a big guy to potentially swipe his rebound, you were taking an elbow in the chops. If you recklessly dribbled into traffic hoping for a bailout call, better luck next time. If you crossed the line and went too far, the other players took care of you. This was a man’s game. You’d never see something like it today. Ever.

Meanwhile, the fans weren’t even fans anymore, more like Romans cheering for gladiators in the Colosseum. Leading by one in the final minute, Philly’s Dawkins plowed toward the basket, got leveled by Parish and McHale, and whipped an ugly shot off the backboard as he crashed to the floor. Bird hauled down the rebound in traffic, dribbled out of an abyss of bodies (including three strewn on the floor, almost like the final scene of
Rollerball)
, and pushed the ball down the court, ultimately stopping on a dime and banking a 15-footer that pretty much collapsed the roof. Philly called time as Larry pranced down the floor—arms still raised, soaking in the cheers—before finally unleashing an exaggerated, sweeping fist pump. Bird never acknowledged the crowd; this was the first hint of emotion from him. He finally threw us a bone. We went absolutely ballistic and roared through the entire time-out, drowning out the organ
music and cheering ourselves when the horn signaled the players to return to the floor.
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When the Celtics prevailed on a botched alley-oop and everyone charged the floor, Bird remained there for a few seconds at midcourt, jumping up and down like a schoolgirl, holding his head in disbelief as fans swarmed him. Of all the great victories from the Bird era, that’s the only nontitle time where Boston fans loitered outside the Garden for hours afterward, honking horns, exchanging high fives and hugs, chanting “Phil-lee sucks!” and turning Causeway into Bourbon Street. We wanted Bird to be the next Russell, the next Orr, the next Havlicek. For the first time, it looked like he might get there.

Nothing that followed was a surprise: Bird’s first championship in ’81; his first MVP award in ’84; his memorable butt-kicking of Bernard and the Knicks in Game 7 of the Eastern Semifinals; and then a grueling victory over the despicable Lakers in the ’84 Finals that featured the definitive Larry performance, Game 5, when it was 96 degrees outside and 296 degrees inside a Garden that didn’t have air-conditioning. Fans were passing out in the stands. Well-dressed housewives were wiping sweaty makeup off their brows.
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Fat Irish guys had armpit stains swelling on their green Celtics T-shirts. Even the dehydrated Lakers team couldn’t wait to get back to California; Kareem and Worthy were sucking from oxygen masks during time-outs. Of course, Bird absolutely loved the ruthless conditions, ending up with 34 points and 17 rebounds as his overheated minions rooted him on. As Bird was finishing them off in the fourth, the Lakers called time and M. L. Carr started fanning Bird with a towel … and Larry just shoved him away, insulted. Like M.L. was ruining the moment for him. Imagine breaking down in Death Valley on a 110-degree day, only if you were trapped inside your car with seventeen other people. That’s how hot the Garden was that night, only we didn’t care. All we knew was that Bird was God, the Lakers were wilting like pussies, and we were part of the whole thing. We were sweating, too.

Those were the games when Bird and the Garden worked like Lennon and McCartney together. Can you imagine him playing in the TD Bank-north Garden and looking mildly appalled during a time-out as dance music blared and overcaffeinated flunkies fired T-shirts into the crowd with cannons? Me neither. When the Bird era crested in 1986, it was the ultimate marriage of the right crowd and the right team: a 67-win machine that finished 50–1 at home (including playoffs). Remember the scene in
Hoosiers
right after Jimmy Chitwood made the “I play, Coach stays” speech and joined the team, when they had that inspiring “this team’s coming together” montage? That’s what every home game felt like. The season ended with Bird walking off the floor in Game 6 of the Finals, fresh off demolishing the Rockets with a triple double, his jersey drenched with sweat and the crowd screaming in delight. It was perfect. Everything about that season was perfect. And to think my dad could have bought that stupid motorcycle.

Only one question remained: how many more memorable years did Bird have in him? During his apex in ’86 and ’87, he increased his trash-talking (nobody was better)
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and started fooling around during games (including one time in Portland when he decided to shoot everything left-handed), like he was bored and kept upping the stakes to challenge himself. There was the famous story of the first three-point shootout, when he walked into the locker room and told everyone they were playing for second. Or the time he told Seattle’s Xavier McDaniel exactly where he was shooting a game-winning shot, then lived up to the promise by nailing a jumper right in X-Man’s mug. You could fill an entire documentary with those anecdotes; that’s what NBA Entertainment eventually did by producing
Larry Bird: A Basketball Legend.
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As the game-winners and stories kept piling up, number 33 moved onto Boston’s Mount Rushmore with Orr, Williams, and Russell. We thought he could do anything. We thought he was a superhero. When they announced the starting lineups
before games, Bird came last and his introduction was always drowned out by an unwritten rule that all Celtics fans screamed at the top of their lungs as soon as we heard the words, “And at the other forward, from Indiana Sta …” We didn’t cheer him as much as we revered him.

When Lenny Bias overdosed two days after the 1986 draft, Bird lost the young teammate who would have extended his career, assumed some of the scoring load and reduced his minutes. The man’s body betrayed him in his waning years, worn down by too many charges taken, too many hard fouls, and too many reckless dives for loose balls. Hobbled by faulty heels and a ravaged back, stymied by a wave of athletic black forwards that were slowly making the Kelly Tripuckas and Kiki Vandeweghes obsolete
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—guys Bird always feasted on in the past, by the way—poor Bird could barely drag his crippled body up and down the court. He was doing it all on memory and adrenaline. During his final two seasons (’91 and ’92), he’d miss three or four weeks of the schedule, spend nights in the hospital
in traction
to rest his back, then return with a cumbersome back brace like nothing happened.
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Invariably, he’d add another game to his ESPN Classic resume. Like the famous Game 5 against Indiana in ’91, when he banged his head against the floor, returned Willis Reed-style, then carried the Celts past the Pacers. Or the 49-point outburst against the Blazers on national TV, when the crowd chanted, “Lar-ree! Lar-ree!”
before
he obliged with a game-tying three in regulation. This was like watching Bird karaoke. Everything crested during a home playoff game against the ’91 Pistons, when a struggling Bird couldn’t get anything going, then an actual bird flew out of the rafters and halted play by parking itself defiantly at midcourt. The crowd recognized the irony and immediately starting chanting, “Lar-ree! Lar-ree! Lar-ree!” For the only time in the entire series, our crippled hero came alive. He started hitting jumpers, a bunch of them, and the Celtics pulled
away for a crucial victory. As we joyously filed out of the Garden, my father asked me, “Did that really just happen?”

It did. I think.

When Bird finally retired in ’92, it happened for the right reasons: his body couldn’t handle an NBA schedule anymore. Unlike Magic, he never came back or lowered himself to an Old-Timers Game.
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Unlike Jordan, he never would have toiled away on a mediocre team past his prime. He walked away and stayed away. The Celtics never recovered. Actually, that’s an understatement. Bias had gotten the ball rolling, but when Bird retired, the Celtics passed away and became something else. Then Reggie Lewis dropped dead, and McHale retired, and the Garden got knocked down, and M. L. Carr screwed things up, and we lost the Duncan lottery, and Rick Pitino screwed things up, and Chris Wallace screwed things up, and Danny Ainge screwed things up, and somewhere during that torturous stretch the Celtics stopped being the Celtics. Three different times after Bird hung up his Converse Weapons, my father nearly gave up his suddenly expensive seats and couldn’t do it. After the 2007 Celtics shamefully tanked their way to 61 losses and still couldn’t land Kevin Durant or Greg Oden, the team sent him a 2007–8 bill for midcourt seats priced at $175 per ticket. Yup, the same price for a single season ticket in 1974 couldn’t cover half of one game in 2008. Nobody would have blamed Pops for cutting ties after such a miserable season; there was one week where he nearly pulled the trigger. In the end, he couldn’t walk away. Had he given up those tickets and watched the Celtics turn things around from afar, he never would have forgiven himself. So Dad renewed and hoped for the fifteenth straight spring that one lucky break would launch us back to prominence, whether it was a trade, a draft pick or Brian Scalabrine developing superhuman powers after being exposed to a nuclear reactor. He hoped for another game like the famous Bird-Dominique duel,
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when Larry had come through enough times that you could literally feel it coming
before it happened. After that masterpiece of a sporting event—really, it was a life experience—we were too wired to head right home, so we found an ice cream shop called Bailey’s in Wellesley and ordered a couple of hot fudge sundaes. I don’t think we said anything for twenty solid minutes. We just kept eating ice cream and shaking our heads. What could you say? How could you put something like that into words? We were speechless. We were drained. We were lucky.

You can’t walk away from the potential of more Bailey’s moments, even if the NBA stacks heavy odds against such bliss happening for more than three or four franchises at the same time. Once the league expanded to thirty teams, luck became a greater factor than ever before. You need luck in the lottery, luck with young players, luck with trades, luck with everything. Phoenix landed Amar’e Stoudemire only because eight other teams passed on him. Portland landed Greg Oden when they had 5.3 percent odds of getting the first pick. Dallas landed Dirk Nowitzki because Milwaukee thought it would be a good idea to trade his rights for Robert Traylor. New Orleans landed Chris Paul only because three teams stupidly passed on him. Shit, even Auerbach landed Bird because of luck. Five teams could have drafted him before Boston and all five passed. That’s the NBA. You need to be smart and lucky. When Lewis passed away seven summers after Bias’ tragic death, the Celtics stopped being lucky and definitely stopped being smart. That didn’t stop my father from steadfastly renewing those tickets every summer with his fingers crossed, hoping things would somehow revert to the way they were.

As strange as this sounds, it’s more painful to live the high life as a basketball fan and lose it than to never live that high life at all. Imagine a basketball team as an airplane—if you never flew first class, you wouldn’t know what you were missing every time you crammed yourself into coach. But what if you spent a few years traveling first class, reclining your seat all the way, relishing the leg room, sipping complimentary high-end drinks, eating steak and warm chocolate chip cookies, sitting near celebrities and trophy wives and feeling like a prince? Head back to coach after that and you’re thinking, “Wow, this sucks!” the entire time. Well, that’s what an income tax refund bought my father in 1973: two remarkable decades of basketball, a boatload of happy memories, forty or fifty potentially splendid nights a year, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any
better, a chance to follow the entire career of one of the greatest players ever … and after everything slowed down and the Celtics downgraded from first to coach, the hope against hope that it was a temporary setback and we might get upgraded again. Even if it meant paying first-class prices for coach seats every year, my father didn’t care. He was ready to get invited to the front of the plane again. He would always be ready.