Tag: Larry Bird

Red Auerbach once fired a Celtics ballboy for being a Knicks fan

Former Boston Celtics head coach, general manager and president Red Auerbach took Celtics Pride seriously.

In a story by the New York Daily News’ Stefan Bondy, Gerald Brown — who now hosts a weekly SiriusXM radio show, “The Bottom Line Sports Show,” with Rick Mahorn and a podcast named “In the Key” with BJ Armstrong — took a walk down memory lane as he relayed an interesting tale about Boston Celtics legends Red Auerbach and Larry Bird.

Brown is a Harlem native who was once a ballboy for the New York Knicks thanks to a chance meeting with a team staffer. The adolescent career continued when he went to a college in Newton, MA. (just outside of a Boston) but this time, rather than working for the Knicks, Brown would work for their division rival after earning the trust of the team by fetching a new uniform for Bird.

At first, the relationship — though unexpected — went well for Brown.

When the young man had a jacket stolen, Celtics point guard Dennis Johnson gave him $200 in cash to replace it. Bird would even pick up Brown from Mount Ida in his blue pickup truck, which almost seems unfathomable in today’s day and age.

But in the 1989-90 season, Brown would find himself caught in between more than a division rivalry, as Boston and New York would meet in the first round of the 1990 NBA Playoffs. After Bird took over in Game 1 with 24 points, 18 rebounds and 10 assists in a win for the Celtics, the tides turned for both he and Boston.

In a bathroom at Boston Garden, just before Game 2, Brown would be by the team’s head ballboy on the orders of Auerbach (the Celtics’ cigar-toting president at that point of his storied career) for cheering for his hometown team during Game 1. Cheers that Bird noted while watching film and (perhaps jokingly) would then tell Auerbach:

“Red Auerbach happens to be in there. Evidently, he took what Larry said as Larry being upset, like I was not a true Celtic,” Brown says. “He tells the equipment manager Wayne Lebeaux to get rid of me, not realizing that Larry was playing.”

Brown was handed and envelope with cash and sent on his way. However, when a teary-eyed Brown went into the New York’s locker room (“to find some friendly and familiar faces”), Knicks big men Charles Oakley and Patrick Ewing noticed their former ballboy and asked him what happened.
His story so upset the duo that the team allowed him to sit on the bench for the rest of the series. The Celtics lost three straight games to the Knicks after taking Game 2.
Call it a coincidence or divine intervention but it appears that Boston reaped what they had sown; rather than advising or instructing Brown to not express his allegiances on the floor, they fired him for being a fan (albeit a fan of the wrong team).
The Celtics did not win a title for the rest of Bird’s career.

Steph Curry, Klay Thompson selected to The Athletic’s All-Decade team

Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green are three of the best Warriors ever.

As arguably the best backcourt ever, Steph Curry and Klay Thompson will go down as two of the best guards in NBA history.

Curry’s and Thompson’s greatness was recognized Monday by Zach Harper of The Athletic. Harper placed Curry and Thompson on The Athletic’s All-Decade team for the 2010s. Curry was picked as the lead guard for the first team, and Thompson was selected as a wing on the second team. Along with Curry and Thompson, Draymond Green earned honorable mention.

As three-time champions, Curry, Thompson and Green are arguably one of the best trios of all-time.

They’re up there with the 1980s Boston Celtics frontcourt of Kevin McHale, Larry Bird and Robert Parish; the Heatles that consisted of LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh; the Celtics Big 3 of Paul Pierce, Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen; the regularly competitive group of San Antonio Spurs legends Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker.

Curry and Thompson are two of the best shooters ever, and both are ranked in the top five among active players for 3-point field goal percentage. Curry has shot 43.5% from the 3-point line for his career, and Thompson has shot 41.9%.

Green is one of the best defenders of this era, and he’s arguably the most valuable role player of this generation as well. It’s hard to say the Warriors would have been as feared had Green not been on the team.

With his facilitating and hustle, Green was one of the Warriors’ most important players during their run from 2014-2019.

As the decade comes to a close, the Warriors are no longer one of the league’s best teams. Next season, though, with Curry and Thompson presumably healthy, the Warriors should be competitive again.

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Steve Kerr compares Luka Doncic to a pair of legendary NBA players

When a coach that’s seen Steph Curry and Kevin Durant compares Luka Doncic to the reigning MVP and a Hall of Famer, you take note.

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Calling Luka Doncic must-watch television would be an understatement. From the minute he suited up with the Dallas Mavericks, he’s lived up to his pre-draft hype. However, in year two, the reigning Rookie of the Year has double-downed.

Doncic’s sophomore season has been elite. In the month of November, Doncic is averaging 31.9 points, 11.4 rebounds and 10.5 assists per game while shooting 49.5% from the field and 35.5% from beyond the arc. Doncic leads the NBA with seven triple-doubles this season in only 14 games. The one-time EuroLeague MVP is now garnering NBA MVP buzz.

The Slovenian star has carried Dallas to a 9-5 start to the season, with his latest victim being the Golden State Warriors.

The 6-foot-7 stud torched the struggling Warriors for 35 points, 11 assists and 10 rebounds in only 25 minutes, the quickest 35-point triple-double in NBA history.

Championship coach Steve Kerr had a front-row seat to Doncic’s latest triple-double and had high praise for the 20-year-old rising star when he discussed his performance with NBC Sports Bay Area after the loss.

Kerr said he doesn’t have an exact comparison for Doncic since the game has changed so much over time, but he’s a mixture of a current All-Star and a certain Hall of Famer.

I think he and James Harden have a similar type-game for the modern game. The threes, the passing ability, so I think he’s a little bit like Harden.

Comparing Doncic to the reigning MVP is an excellent compliment for a 20-year old second-year player, but Kerr didn’t stop there.

He’s got a little bit of Larry Bird, the ability to see the game a step ahead, but it’s a very different game these days. Bird wasn’t shooting those step-back threes like that off the dribble, he’s a unique player to himself.

You can hear Kerr’s comparison of Doncic at the 1:26 mark below:

For a coach that’s watched players like Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Kevin Durant, that type of acclaim shouldn’t go unnoted.

The only positive with the Warriors’ 3-13 record is that they’re currently in line for a high lottery pick. If they’re lucky, they’ll have a shot at acquiring a talent as rich as Doncic.

Larry Bird talks the state of today’s NBA, player movement and more on local radio

Former Boston Celtics forward Larry Bird isn’t a fan of how free agency has changed.

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.

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.