May Says Bird Nests In Charlotte

[Way Of The Ray <wayray@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Stuck with Wallace and O'Brien for eternity.....


ON BASKETBALL

To Bird, Carolina is finer


By Peter May, Globe Staff, 10/1/2002

He's coming. He's going. He's not talking.

Two out of three ain't bad.

Larry Bird is not saying anything about either moving on to Charlotte or
coming up to Boston. The NBA will do his talking next Monday or Tuesday,
and unless the city fathers in Charlotte really blow it again, it will
vote to re-expand there.

And it is North Carolina where Bird not only likely will go, but also
prefers to go. Get over it, folks. He'd rather be in NASCAR land.

The Charlotte situation is preferable to Bird in so many ways, not the
least of which is financial. The owners there will be able to tap into
the now-obligatory state-of-the-art new arena with all the bells and
whistles. The FleetCenter has none of those available to the Celtics.

Bird not only would be the undisputed hoop Bigfoot there, he would be
starting from the ground up, building his own team with his own moves
and getting his own coaches and assistants. He would not be replacing
anyone, dismissing anyone, and he would be working for someone - Boston
businessman Steve Belkin - he knows and trusts. And he would be doing it
in a place where he has no personal hoop history.

That's what he wants. He has been consistent in that since the day he
left the head coaching job with Indiana. He could have remained in an
executive capacity with the Pacers, but it would have been with an
intact team with others around him. His stated mission: to start
something from scratch, something that will have his fingerprints and
DNA all over it. Some, but not all of that, would have been there for
him in Boston a year and a half ago.

Next week, at the NBA Board of Governors meeting in New York, the league
is expected to announce that it will, indeed, re-expand to Charlotte as
long as there is the framework of some arena deal in place. (Right now,
they don't even have a place, let alone a framework. But a lot can
happen in a week.) The idea would be to have the 30th NBA team up and
running for the 2004-05 season.

If expansion is approved, the league then will take 30-60 days to decide
on a franchisee. Bird's group, led by Belkin, has been the most public
and visible of the aspirants. The group also includes former Celtics
coach and executive M.L. Carr, and former Celtics general manager Jan
Volk. There are two other known wannabes in Black Entertainment
Television founder Bob Johnson and Miami Heat limited partner Robert
Sturges.

Therefore, the new owners of the Charlotte franchise should be on board
no later than the first week in December. And you have to think that if
the NBA does decide to go back to Charlotte, doing so with a group
including Bird would be a coup for the city and the league.

But where does that leave Bird and Boston? Much of his supposed return
to Boston undoubtedly is media-driven, but the Celtics' new owners
opened the door with the ''additional investors'' line and Belkin then
opened it a bit more by saying that, yes, he has talked to them and that
there might be a place at the table for him and Bird.

But all that is fantasy as long as Charlotte is still a viable option.
And the NBA wants to return there; David Stern's imprimatur is about as
viable as it gets in the league. The owners will like the additional
money. The Players Association will like the new jobs. There's a track
record of community support there.

That is where Bird is looking. On Saturday night, he and Belkin met at
Belkin's house with 13 investors in the Charlotte venture. The Boston
option came up, but only as an alternative if everything else broke
down.

''Right now, all his focus and energies are directed toward the effort
in Charlotte,'' Belkin said yesterday. ''If it does fall through, Larry
would be receptive to talking to the Boston ownership group.''

The guess here is that it's not going to fall through. The NBA never
wanted to lose Charlotte in the first place and the city has been
presented with a rare second chance.

The league has been negotiating with the city for some time now to get
an arena deal in place. There's been some infighting down there about
the location of the building, but you don't sense the same hostility
that came with the last arena referendum. That's when voters soundly
defeated plans for a new arena, although it also was seen as a rebuff to
detested owner George Shinn. He's now New Orleans's concern.

If the league green-lights this thing, then Bird has what he wants.
He'll handpick his own players. He'll hire his own coach. He'll bring in
his own people to assist him with personnel decisions.

It will be the Larry Bird Show, which is the only show he's ever wanted
to stage. Sure, it'd be fun to have him back in Boston, but not if it's
not what he wants. He wants Charlotte.