On Hoops-Ryan/Bird piece

["Greg Odegaard" <gmodegaa@longvred.rmc.com>]

2 items off the web:

These snippets from On Hoops about the "pick", things that make you go
hmmm:

"Did Boston get lucky or what?  I thought they were going to go big with
either Keon Clark, Nazr Mohammed or Michael Doleac, but I guess not.  How
could Rick Pittino not select Paul Pierce?  He was by far the best player
available.  With Ron Mercer already entrenched at two guard and Antoine
Walker at power forward, Paul Pierce will most likely push whoever is at
small forward out.  Say goodbye to your starting job, Walter McCarty, Paul
Pierce is wearing Celtic green.  Good pick for Rick.  And watch for a
falling Kentucky center."

"10th Pick - Boston - Paul Pierce
We'd have liked to have been in the Celtics war room when Pitino and Chris
Wallace were just about to announce their pre-planned selection when
suddenly...  one of them looked up and realized Pierce was still on the
board!  Rated among the top 3 talents in the draft - at the very outside,
the top 5 - Pierce has all the skills plus a great attitude to fit right in
with the Celtics.  He's got the size to be a legit NBA 3, plus all the
athletic ability, on both ends, that anyone would be looking for. Pierce
can score from anywhere, and he plays his tail off on the boards, so he
looks like a keeper to us.  Presumably, Antoine Walker will move up
fulltime to the 4 spot, and with Mercer ensconced at the 2 and Kenny A
running the show, the Celtics are going to be even tougher than this
season. Just precisely where Pitino is going to get that big guy he still
needs though, that's anyone's guess."

Do any of us have a guess?



And for all those that want to yada about the CBA, or complain about
sportswriting in Beantown, then take this and file it in your achive:

Read the details about playing for pride and wanting to show you earned
your rewards.  For the most part these are lost virtues, regardless of he
said/she said.



Bird, Hall of Fame: It's truly a perfect fit 

By Bob Ryan, Globe Staff, 06/30/98 


"The NBA is about to lock out its players, and you'll be hearing a lot
about
the so-called ''Larry Bird Exception.'' It has to do with money, and
therein lies the irony: Larry Bird was never about the money. 

Oh, Larry liked money as much as the next guy - ask anyone who has ever
uttered those fateful words Larry, I'll bet you can't ( fill in the blank)
- but once the contract was signed, you never heard another word from Larry
Bird about the money. With Larry Bird, the game came first, second, and
always. 

''The more money you paid him,'' Red Auerbach says, ''the more he wanted to
prove he deserved it.''

You look back at it now, more than six years after his final NBA game, and
he really does seem more like a legend than one of the two greatest players
ever to play in a Boston Celtics uniform (no way I'm going to get bogged
down in a Bird-Russell debate today). The stuff Larry did, the things he
said, and the impact he had on both the franchise and the city itself from
1979-92 could not have been scripted. When it comes to Truth vs. Fiction,
I'll take Truth, plus the points, every time. And Larry Bird was the
simple, unvarnished truth. 

To me, Larry Bird was, and always will be, the personification of the
sport, the one whose game was a microcosm of all the sport has to offer. He
could shoot, he could pass, he could rebound, he could disrupt the other
team's offense, and he could think three steps ahead of the mortal players
(pull out the tape of Houston Game 6 in '86 if you want to see a man
dominating every aspect of a basketball game). 

The only other person who has ever seen what Larry saw and knew deep inside
what Larry knew was, of course, Magic Johnson, his great friend and rival.
Michael? No, Michael is an entirely different matter, as Larry was first in
the NBA to identify and then articulate. Michael Jordan plays a different
game. But don't ever think it's a better one. 

Michael Jordan is great, superb, the Man From Another Planet, and just
generally beyond compare. That's a given, right? 

Well, uh, no. Give the '92 Michael and a completely healthy '86 Bird four
comparable teammates, and I'll happily take my chances with Larry Bird and
his guys. One on one, no contest. Five on five, bring 'em on. 

Has Michael Jordan ever dominated entire huge chunks of basketball games
without taking a shot? No, never. Larry Bird did. Shooting was part of
Larry's game, and not the best part. 

Return with me to Saturday, May 17, 1986. It is Game 3 of the Eastern
Conference finals against the Milwaukee Bucks. In the first period Larry
Bird, a forward, has seven assists. Six are layups, real assists,
old-fashioned assists, Tricky Dick McGuire assists. 

''He was a dealer in Three-Card Monte as Bucks came to surround him,''
wrote the great Leigh Montville, ''and he neatly zipped the ball through
their arms, legs, whatever for easy baskets for someone else. He was
magic.''

No forward has ever played the game this way. ''He gave me at least five
baskets where I didn't have to do a thing,'' said Kevin McHale (speaking of
quasi-fictional characters). ''All I had to do was stand there. Didn't do a
thing.''

''He had one thing on his mind at all times,'' says Auerbach, ''and that
was to win. He made everyone around him play better.''

When I think of Larry Bird, I don't think first of the huge scoring outputs
such as the 60-point game against the Hawks that March night in New Orleans
or the 9-for-10, 20-point fourth quarter against Atlanta in '88. 

I think of the Boston Garden Heat Game against LA in '84, when Kareem & Co.
were sucking on oxygen and Larry was frolicking his way to 15 for 20 and 17
rebounds in 97-degree heat. I think of K.C. Jones saying practice would be
called if anyone could sink a shot from midcourt and Larry immediately
grabbing the ball and preventing practice with one shot. I think of him
sitting in the visiting locker room in Milwaukee's Mecca after being swept
by the Bucks and vowing to go home and come back a better ballplayer. I
think about him diving for the ball in Game 4 of the '87 Milwaukee series
and firing an amazing pass to McHale for a dunk from a sitting position. I
think of an inexplicable and completely unnecessary 15-foot, lefthanded
banker in the middle of a great fourth-quarter Game 7 run against Detroit
in '87. 

I think about him spurning Jones's invitation to go for a quadruple-double
in Salt Lake City (''I've already done enough damage''). I think about him
calling a banked 3-pointer to New York trainer Mike Sauders in the middle
of a game. I think about him standing in front of 20,000 people at City
Hall Plaza and describing the eating habits of Moses Malone. I think about
him taking $160 of Dan Shaughnessy's money by sinking 86 of 100 free throws
with his right hand taped shut. I think about him returning to Game 5
against Indiana in '91 like the cavalry after landing on his head in the
second quarter. I think of the way he used the media to get to the crowd
before big games. I think about him looking up at Bobby Orr's number 4
during the anthem, because ''when I retire, I want people to look at me the
way they do at him.'' I think about him saying, ''Tell Dudley Bradley to
cut his damn fingernails.''

More legend: Every year somebody or other sinks some threes and sets a new
record of some sort, but don't ever be fooled. I am here to say that Larry
Bird remains the King of the Three-Pointers because no one has ever better
understood the psychological effect of the three better than Larry Bird.
And I doubt if anyone will ever match his 1986 25-for-34 3-point run from
the real 3-point distance, either. There are guys today who can shoot
threes, but only Larry Bird ever made it an art form. 

He always understood what real leadership was, and he never ran from it. He
knew he was different and better than everybody else, and he knew what
responsibilities went with the territory. ''There's no question I'm the
leader of this team,'' he once said. ''Guys look at me and how I play and
it determines how they play. I know that. I recognize that. I don't mean
running around and everything on the floor. I might have done that my first
few years, trying to lead. I mean making the plays.''

Healthy or injured - and when injured he simply refused to discuss the
matter - he made plays when they were most needed. He was the superstar
with the 12th man mentality. No millionaire player ever went after more
loose balls. ''I don't ever want to be sitting in a locker room after
losing a game by 2 points thinking back to a time when I could have gone to
the floor and made the play for those points, but didn't,'' he explained.
''That's never happened to me once. And I don't want it ever to happen.''

It never did. The only thing left now is for Larry Bird to solve the
mystery. Once upon a time, he said, ''There's a secret to playin'
basketball. But I ain't tellin' what it is.''

On Oct. 2, Larry Bird will enter the Basketball Hall of Fame. Maybe that's
when we'll find out."

This story ran on page C01 of the Boston Globe on 06/30/98. 
© Copyright 1998 Globe Newspaper Company.