Larry Bird may no longer be a regular fixture in the Boston sports world but he’s also never far away.
Recently, the former Boston Celtics forward — A Hall of Fame inductee in 1998 — made an appearance on the local sports radio show Ordway, Merloni & Fauria to talk all things Celtics and the broader state of the league.
As to the latter, Larry Legend had some thoughts on the evolution of the sport to rely so heavily on 3-pointers, which were introduced to the NBA just as he himself was coming into the league in 1979.
“Obviously, we’d be taking more 3-pointers because that’s where the game’s evolving,”, said Bird (via WEEI’s Nick Friar) of how he and players of his ilk would be approaching the modern NBA.
“You know back in the day, we wouldn’t even guard guys out beyond the 3-point line. And very few guys looked at the basket from 23 to 25 feet. But the game has changed and the game goes through periods where it changes and you just have to adapt to the changes.
And that’s what we would’ve done, we would adapt. I can remember back in the day Danny Ainge said we should shoot all 3-pointers every game.”
Looking forward to the present-day Celtics, headed by Ainge as president of basketball operations, the Indianian’s words ring true. This current iteration of Bird’s sole NBA team is well known for their propensity for the 3-ball — some nights last season, to a fault.
And speaking of Bird’s only team, the “Hick from French Lick”, as Bird is sometimes called, shared his feelings on the current trend of player movement around the league.
Larry Bird spoke with @WEEI about player movement in the modern NBA, and how it has changed since his playing days. pic.twitter.com/B4TxuFHBq1
— RADIO.COM Sports (@RDCSports) November 14, 2019
Despite his continued role as a front office consultant for the Indiana Pacers, the 12-time All-Star was surprisingly supportive of player movement — within a certain context.
“My problem with it, if you’re a free agent, you can go anywhere you want and join any team you want, but when you start forcing your way out of teams — it’s usually the small markets, too, that draft a guy, put all our time into developing him, and then when he gets good he wants to go somewhere else,” Bird said (via Friar).”
Whether this is a veiled reference to former Indiana star Paul George forcing his way out of that organization under Bird’s tenure as a franchise advisor, or perhaps the tedious saga that unfolded during Boston’s pursuit of Anthony Davis last season or simply a general dislike of the driving force behind both is unclear, unlike Bird’s preferred manner of player movement.
“[I]f you just wait until you’re a free agent and go somewhere, I have no problem with it. But it sort of bothers me when guys want to leave a team that they’re on (and) they still have a few years left and force their way out because it puts a lot of pressure on management and the franchise.”
And while on the topic of movement, why did Larry Legend depart from the region in which his career became gold, Bird is quite vocal about how much he still loves the city, emphatically stating that Boston is “the greatest place in the world to play any sport … You’ve got the best fans in the world in every sport” (via team reporter Taylor Snow).
The answer might surprise you. Unless, of course, you lived through the disaster Bird cites as a reason for escaping the area.
“I’ll tell you why I left: because the Big Dig was coming in when I was leaving,” says Bird. I knew that was going to be 20-something years.”
To those of us who have dealt with the headaches it caused, well — we forgive you, Larry; you weren’t wrong.