Seventeen Years of Nothing but Highs
Larry Bird came out of the French Lick area to fill gyms at Springs Valley and Indiana State, rebuilt the Boston Celtics, and came home to Indiana to coach and run the Pacers.
On August 18, 1992, Larry Bird sat in front of reporters at Boston Garden and said he was finished. “This is enough. I’ve had enough to last me a lifetime,” he said, according to United Press International. “The pounding and the pain made my decision for me. I gave my heart, my body, my soul to the Celtics.”3 He was 35. Barely a week earlier he had won an Olympic gold medal in Barcelona.3
He did not ask anyone to feel bad for him. “I would have liked to play a year or two more,” he said. “But don’t feel sorry for me, I had a great life” in basketball. Counting his college years, he told the room, “It’s been 17 years of nothing but highs.”4
Those seventeen years began in southern Indiana. This story follows them through the record kept by the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, the National Basketball Association, Indiana State University and the wire reports filed the day he retired. Larry Bird is living, so this page has no section on his death and no grave section.
West Baden and French Lick
The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame gives his date of birth as December 7, 1956, and his birthplace as West Baden, Indiana.1 The NBA’s history of his career says his legend was born in French Lick. It says that French Lick had a population of 2,059, and that most of the town came out to watch Springs Valley High School’s home games “in a state that takes its schoolboy basketball very seriously.” Attendance often reached 1,600, the NBA wrote, “and they were all there to watch the blond-haired shooting whiz with a funny smile named Larry Joe Bird.”2
The NBA’s account describes a family that “led a spartan life.” Bird’s parents could not afford a car of their own, it says, but fans were always willing to give them a ride to the games.2
His high school career did not start smoothly. A broken ankle cut short his sophomore season, according to the NBA. He emerged as a star as a junior, when Springs Valley went 19–2 and he became a local celebrity. As a senior he became the school’s all-time scoring leader, and about 4,000 people came to his final home game.2 The Hall of Fame’s biography says he “led Springs Valley High School to the state sectional championship.”1
His high school coach, Jim Jones, coached him for two years. Speaking at Indiana State in 2013, Jones remembered the junior season. “He was our best player as a junior, yet he was not necessarily the leading scorer,” Jones said. “He could have been, but he took so much pride in winning he made everybody else play so much better.”5
Three colleges
Bird’s path out of French Lick was not straight. The NBA’s history says he “found the transition to college life difficult.” He started at Indiana University, under Bobby Knight, and left. He then left a local junior college, Northwood Institute. Finally he enrolled at Indiana State University in Terre Haute.2 The Sycamores had gone 12–14 in each of the two seasons before he arrived.2
Larry Bird Ball
At Indiana State, the NBA wrote, Bird “single-handedly packed the house.” Home attendance had hovered around 3,100 when he got there. In his first season he averaged better than 30 points and 10 rebounds a game. Season-ticket sales tripled. Television stations showed film clips of him instead of commercials. Students skipped class to line up for tickets eight hours before tipoff. “‘Larry Bird Ball’ was the most popular sport in Terre Haute,” the NBA wrote.2
His teammates remembered how he practiced. Carl Nicks, who played with Bird on the 1978–79 team, said in 2013 that he had doubts at first about Bird’s no-nonsense approach. “Once we started playing and I seen Larry’s toughness, and his dedication, his passion for the game it brought out the best in me,” Nicks said.5 Bob Heaton, another teammate, said Bird “worked for everything he got.” Bird himself said his goal each day “was to outwork everyone, not only on the opposing team but on my own team. I showed up early and I stayed late and I knew it was paying off.”5
The Boston Celtics drafted him in 1978, after his junior year, when he became eligible. UPI reported that he was the sixth pick overall.3 The Celtics hoped he might skip his senior season, the NBA wrote, but knew “he was worth the wait even if he didn’t.” Bird went back to Indiana State for one more year. Boston, which had gone 32–50 the season before, fell to 29–53 without him.2
The 1979 final
His senior season was the one people remember. The Sycamores went undefeated and reached No. 1 in the country, according to the NBA.2 The NCAA’s own summary of the 1979 tournament says that Indiana State was the only No. 1 seed to reach the Final Four in Salt Lake City, and that Bird was the tournament’s leading scorer and rebounder.6 Heaton’s half-court shot against New Mexico State kept the Sycamores alive along the way, Indiana State recalled in 2013.5
In the final, Indiana State met Michigan State and its guard Earvin “Magic” Johnson. Michigan State won, 75–64, its first national championship, and Johnson was named Most Outstanding Player.6 It was the first appearance in the national final for both schools.6 Indiana State’s athletics department wrote in 2013 that the game “remains the highest rated NCAA championship game ever.”5
Bird was named the 1978–79 College Player of the Year and left Indiana State as the fifth-highest scorer in NCAA history, according to the NBA. The Sycamores went 81–13 in his three seasons.2
He also finished school. Heaton recalled in 2013 that Bird honored his student-teaching commitment at West Vigo High School after the title game, even after the Celtics had drafted him. “Nowadays, I think, once you use up your eligibility you don’t even think about graduating, but that was Larry’s goal,” Heaton said.5
A promise in Boston
Bird signed with the Celtics in June 1979. UPI later recalled what he said that day: “I will give 100 percent every time I go out on the floor and I’ll play team ball. I won’t sit on the bench with any broken fingernail.”4
The Celtics’ president, Red Auerbach, remembered the young man who signed. “Thirteen years ago he looked like a little old country bumpkin,” Auerbach said in 1992. “When you looked into his eyes you knew you weren’t talking to any dummy. He knew what he wanted in life and he knew what it would take to get there.”3 When Bird arrived, UPI wrote, he was known as “the hick from French Lick.”4 The Hall of Fame uses the same nickname.1
His first season changed the team. The 1979–80 Celtics went 61–21, a 32-game improvement.2,3 UPI reported that the turnaround set an NBA record that stood until 1989–90.3 Bird played all 82 games and led the team in scoring, rebounding, steals and minutes, according to the NBA. He was named Rookie of the Year.2 The rookie he beat for the award was Magic Johnson, whose Los Angeles Lakers won the championship that year.2
The Hall of Fame says that Bird and Johnson “rejuvenated the NBA, propelling basketball to new heights.”1 UPI put it more bluntly in 1992: the two arrived “at a time the NBA was a dying league,” and “nothing revived the league more than their coinciding emergence as stars and role models.”3
Three banners
Boston won the NBA championship in 1981, 1984 and 1986 with Bird.1,3 He was the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1984, 1985 and 1986, and the playoffs MVP in 1984 and 1986, UPI reported.3 The NBA notes that he was only the third player, and the first who was not a center, to win three MVP awards in a row.2 He was named to the All-NBA First Team nine times.1,2
After the 1984 finals, when Boston beat Johnson’s Lakers, Bird declared, “This one’s for Terre Haute,” according to Indiana State. The school called it a reference to one of the greatest disappointments of his life, losing the 1979 title.5
Some of his records are specific. UPI reported that he scored 60 points against the Atlanta Hawks on March 12, 1985, a Celtics single-game record, and that in 1986–87 he became the first NBA player to shoot 50 percent from the field and 90 percent from the free-throw line in the same season.3 The NBA’s history says he won three straight three-point shootout titles, and that in a 1988 playoff game against Atlanta he scored 20 points in the fourth quarter while he had bronchial pneumonia.2
Magic Johnson said in 1992, “On the court, Larry was the only player in the league that I feared and he was the smartest player I ever played against.”3
The back
Injuries followed him. The NBA’s history says surgery to remove bone spurs from both heels limited him to six games in 1988–89.2 Back trouble began in 1990–91, when he missed 22 games because of a compressed nerve root.2,3 He had surgery on June 7, 1991, to repair disc and nerve damage, UPI reported, but he said his back never recovered after a fall in practice that December. He missed 37 games in his last season.3
He still had one more championship to win. Bird and Johnson were co-captains of the 1992 U.S. Olympic team, the “Dream Team,” in Barcelona, UPI reported. Bird played eight games and averaged 8.4 points and 3.8 rebounds.3 UPI wrote that at 35 he became “the oldest basketball player ever to win a gold medal at the Olympics.” On the victory stand, he said, he thought it might be his final moment as a competitive player, “and I took some time to smell the roses.”4
Then came the news conference. UPI reported that he had been considering retirement for three months.3 His tears, he said, had come the night before, at home.4 “I never wanted this day to come but it’s here and I have to deal with it.”4 NBA Commissioner David Stern said, “Larry Bird has helped to define the way a generation of basketball fans has come to view and appreciate the NBA.”3
Bird retired with 21,791 points in 897 regular-season games, an average of 24.3 points, 10.0 rebounds and 6.3 assists.2,3 The Hall of Fame says he held or shared 27 Celtics records when he retired, and that his number 33 was raised to the rafters of Boston Garden.1
“If you don’t play for the Boston Celtics, you never played professional basketball,” he said that day. “I played over 1,100 games for the Celtics; it sounds like a lot of games but I probably played that many in my backyard before I ever got here.”3
Coming home
Bird stayed with the Celtics as a special assistant.3,4 The NBA’s history says he spent most of the next five years in Florida, mostly bored, and that the urge to get back into the game grew each year. When the Celtics hired Rick Pitino as president and coach, Bird “cut the ties and went home.”2
On May 12, 1997, the Indiana Pacers named him head coach, even though he had never coached a game.2 “I’m new at this (coaching) game but I feel I can get the job done,” he said.2 The Pacers’ president, Donnie Walsh, said: “This guy is the epitome of everything I’ve tried to do here.”2
He coached three seasons. He was the NBA Coach of the Year in 1997–98, and in 2000 he took the Pacers to the NBA Finals, where they lost to the Lakers in six games. He resigned as coach after that series.2
In 2003 he returned to the Pacers as president of basketball operations. In 2012 he was named NBA Executive of the Year, which made him, according to the league, the only person in NBA history to win Most Valuable Player, Coach of the Year and Executive of the Year. He stepped down after the 2011–12 season, citing health issues, returned in 2013, and stepped down again in 2017 to take an advisory role with the franchise.2
The Hall of Fame enshrined him in 1998.1
Larry Legend
On a November weekend in 2013, Indiana State unveiled a bronze statue of Bird outside Hulman Center, the arena where he had played. The university’s athletics department reported that thousands of fans filled the closed street and the upper levels of a parking garage. The statue, called “Larry Legend,” weighs 1,900 pounds. Indiana State’s president, Dan Bradley, said it measured 17 feet, one and one-eighth inches from the top of the ball to the sidewalk, enough “to dwarf the 12-foot structure at Michigan State.”5
The idea came from students, the athletics department reported. In 2006, an Indiana State student saw Johnson’s statue at Michigan State and resolved that Bird should have a bigger one. Students and alumni formed the Larry Legend Foundation to build the statue and to create a scholarship in Bird’s name for future men’s basketball players from Indiana. A fundraising dinner raised $400,000 to endow it. The ISU Alumni Association also gave Bird its Distinguished Alumnus Award that weekend.5
Bird admitted to nerves. “You ain’t going to believe this, but I’m nervous as hell right now,” he said at the unveiling. Then he turned to the Sycamores, who had a game that night. “They’ve got a game in there and I’m worried about that game,” he said.5
He gave the credit to his 1979 teammates. The honor, he said, was “truly a great honor - not only for me but for my teammates from ‘79. You know, basketball is a team game and that year for some reason, God smiled down on us.”5 And he spoke about the scholarship players who would follow. “If you dedicate yourself to something that you really love, your dreams will come true,” he said. “I know I’m living proof of that.” Of the future players, he said: “If they reach their dreams like I did, I’ll be very happy.”5
Where the record disagrees
The sources differ on a few points, and this page reports both versions rather than choosing one: