by Larry Bird
I knew next to nothing about Lou Gehrig’s disease until Mom got it. The medical term for it is amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and it’s a fatal disease with no known cause and no cure. Lou Gehrig, a star baseball player for the Yankees, died from it, so they renamed it after him. It’s really a horrible disease. It’s a slow, degenerative illness that attacks the nerve cells in the brain and the spine, and eventually the muscles become paralyzed.
When I hung up with the doctor, I went in to see Mom. I said, “Let me tell you what the doctor said.” She said, “Oh yeah, okay.” I looked at her and I said, “Do you want me to lie to you, or do you want me to tell the truth?” Typical Mom. She said, “Well, Larry, I think I’ll take the truth.” I told her what the doctor had said. She sat there for a minute, then said, “Well, looks like I’m going to have fun for the next six months.” I explained the whole thing and told her she could tell the rest of the family whenever she was ready. She was getting weaker and weaker every day. We could all see that. She was losing all her muscle definition. I stayed for a while, but when I was getting ready to leave she said, “Can you bring some of those weights over here for me?” I said, “Mom, it ain’t gonna help.” But I brought them to her anyway.
As much as she hated to fly, Mom got on a plane during those next six months and came down to Naples to see the kids. She did a lot of traveling around in the car, catching up with old friends. She did what she said she was going to do—she had fun.
Mom got the feeding tube, and she didn’t like it at all, but she knew she had to have it. She was a guinea pig, really. She’d go up to Indianapolis every three weeks or so, and they’d have all these doctors in there, testing her, and asking her a ton of questions. She loved it. She really thought she was helping somebody else out. But then it got to where she couldn’t talk anymore, and that was the end of that.
That was the worst part. It was murder on her, not to be able to talk. She could hear fine, and her mind was as clear as a bell, but she couldn’t speak to us. All the muscles around her throat were gone.
It ended up going pretty much the way the doctor said. She got around some in those first six months, but she went downhill real fast. She just got so weak. She was wasting away to nothing, and it was really hard to watch. My sister Linda was with her all the time, and Dinah was with her a lot too. Poor Mom. She did the best she could, but there’s no way to beat this thing.
The thing that bothered me the most was when I had to go to training camp with the Celtics that October. It was M. L.’s first year as coach, 1996, and we were headed down to Tennessee for about a week. I left on a Sunday, and I went over to see Mom before I went, and I knew it would be the last time I would see her alive. I didn’t say much. Just kissed her goodbye. She died Monday night, so I had to go right back. The whole family was there. It didn’t seem real at first. I knew she was going, but I guess I was figuring it would be more like a week, not just a couple of days. The thing that I wonder about, the part that must have been so hard for her, was that her mind was clear right down to the end. You wish she didn’t have to suffer like that.
I think about Mom a lot when I walk into Market Square Arena and everyone is screaming and clapping and shouting, because she would have been right there with them. She followed basketball pretty closely. We had a satellite dish in West Baden, so she could watch anything she wanted. She was a big Isiah Thomas fan, and liked to watch all the Pistons games. My friend Tom Hill always said Mom was the best coach all of us kids ever had, because she was the first one to teach us discipline and hard work. Looking back, she really was amazing. I don’t know how she kept track of all of us and kept us all out of trouble, but she did.
Before Mom died, she’d look after the house for us when we weren’t there. Whenever we’d come home, she’d be flying out the front door, running to greet us. My kids really loved Mom. She was real good with them. I know they are young, but I really think they will remember her. I miss Mom every single day of my life.
CHAPTER 11
On Team Dynamics
I’ve said over and over no coach should stay in one place longer than three years. You stay longer than that and you get stale. The players don’t listen as closely. So after my three years is up with Indiana, I will step down as coach. People have asked me if I’d go to another city and do this again, but I can’t see it happening. I don’t know. Maybe it could—it’s just that I’ve got the best group of guys in Indiana. If I had one or two guys who didn’t care about winning, it wouldn’t make it worthwhile for me. I’m just lucky I have this collection of players who really want it. Too often these days it seems the NBA has a group of guys with too much going on. That’s what people don’t realize. If one guy is off, it can affect the whole team. When I was with the Celtics, the guy that I could never figure out was Tiny Archibald. He was a terrific player, but from one practice to the next you never knew what you were going to get from him in terms of his personality. When Tiny was in a really good mood, we’d all say, “Hey, let’s live it up! Tiny is happy today.” And when he wasn’t, we just tried to get through that practice and get out of there.
Everybody has their own way of figuring out these athletes. I just rely on my gut. Danny Ainge has this guy he hired for his Phoenix team that can look at your facial expressions and your brainwaves and tell you what kind of person you are. It’s this formula that determines if you have leadership potential or not. Danny is really into it, and he was telling me all about it last spring. I’m sitting there listening and thinking, “This guy has lost his mind.” I was laughing my butt off. He said, “Larry, you are an intense, high-personality guy, a lot of serial killers have the same profile as you.” I said, “Yeah, Danny, I ought to kill you for saying that.”
When I first came in, we had this psychiatrist that had been with the team since Jack Ramsay was the coach in 1988. Jack Ramsay wanted him to administer this test to his players. He wanted to know who was a leader. But I’m thinking to myself, “After one month with these guys I’m going to know every one of them. We’re wasting our money on this guy.” I’ve always said you find out more about a player when things are going bad than when things are going good. Anybody can keep it together when you’re winning every night.
When I looked at our roster, I knew we had some really, really good players, but no one guy who could carry us on his back night after night. Those guys, like Jordan, are rare. So for much of the early part of the year, my guys pooled from each other. That’s how they managed, by feeding off one another. Like Chris Mullin. Guys were really happy for him. He had come from Golden State, where everything had fallen apart, so our guys wanted him to succeed. They would really try to get him the ball. Same thing with Reggie, or Rik, if he was feeling it. They are just so unselfish. That’s how they do things. As far as leading them, I told them, “Don’t worry about me. I’ll handle all the bull. This team should just focus on playing basketball. If you guys want me to lead you, I’ll lead you. I can’t score any baskets, but I’ll have you prepared to score those baskets.”
My biggest concern about our guys coming in is who would emerge as a true leader for us. I asked Donnie, “Who is the leader on this team?” He said, “You’ve got guys who think they are leaders, but they really aren’t.” After a couple of months it became obvious to me that our leader was Mark Jackson. He wasn’t the most talented guy on our team, but guys responded to him.
What Mark did was get these guys in the right frame of mind. He was the one who earned their respect. When he was in a huddle and he said, “Look, we’ve got five minutes left, and we’re down by four points, let’s shut them down,” you could see their eyes getting bigger. That was all they needed to hear, sometimes, to get them all fired up.
People think it’s an easy thing to be a leader. It’s not. You have to earn the respect of your teammates. You have to be willing to challenge them as well as support them. And you have to prove you are willing to do whatever it takes. I can remember Cedric Maxwell sayin
g once, “You can always tell when Larry’s back is hurting, because the first thing he’ll do at the beginning of the game is dive for a loose ball. He might not get to it, but he’ll pop his back, he’ll feel better, and he’ll take care of any ideas that he’s not ready to go.” Max was right. Anytime I went down for a loose ball, and a mess of guys ended up diving for it, our team always got fired up by that. Hey, I got fired up by it. And that helped me forget about my injuries. Think about it. If I came out and it was obvious I was having a problem because I wasn’t moving well, and favoring that back, then the guys would be saying, “Ah, Larry’s hurting tonight. We’re going to have a tough time.”
You take a guy on our team like Rik Smits. You never really used to see Rik dive for loose balls. But last year I saw him flying all over the court. These guys bought into the fact that that kind of effort would win games for us. The one thing I have to say about these guys is that they truly know I believe in them, so they listen. We’d be down a few points, and we’d have a time-out and I’d say, “Look guys, don’t get frustrated. We’ve got plenty of time left out there, let’s use it to our advantage. We’re not out of this game. We’re gonna win this game.” I’d say it real calm, like I knew what I was talking about, and they’d go out there and come back, and we’d win the game, and they’d be in the locker room afterward saying, “Man! We really can do this!”
I think that happened with Mark Jackson more than any of the other guys. He understood right away what I was trying to do with the team. Here was a player whose career had taken so many twists and turns, and I think he saw a coach that was willing to let him be whatever he wanted to be, as long as he put in the work and the effort.
Mark Jackson reminds me of Dennis Johnson. It’s the way he gets the ball and knows what’s going on all the time, and won’t hesitate to step up and nail the big shot, even if he’s missed the last ten in a row. Mark works for everything he gets. He reminds me a little of myself, in that way. He keeps plugging and plugging. Look at how his career has gone. He was Rookie of the Year in New York, then that all went bad, and for a while he was a guy people didn’t respect that much. But then he comes to Indiana, and he is the key guy. All you have to do is look at what happened to the team when they traded him the season before I got there. They lost all their chemistry. I can understand why Larry Brown did it. He thought Travis Best could start at point guard. But Travis is the perfect backup. Anyhow, it’s been a long road for Mark Jackson, and I was so happy for him we had the success we did last season. The truth is, he saved our butt. He’s the one who, if we lost a big game or something, would get everyone together and give them a talk. It really helped the younger guys. They definitely reacted to it.
That’s why I got so frustrated with him in our playoff series against New York. He was playing great, and that’s when he started doing that shimmy thing, and I just wanted to deck him. It was Game 3 of the Eastern Conference semifinals, and Mark had just caused a turnover, and then he went into this shimmy, a real showboat move where he gyrates up the court dribbling the ball. He was doing it at the Knicks bench, and even though we were up by 13 points I knew right away it was a mistake. I knew New York was a good defensive team, and I knew they were gonna make a run. They did, and they won the game. The next morning we had a breakfast meeting. I just laid it on the line to him. I felt he had put us in a position to lose that game, and I told him that. He didn’t say anything, because he already knew. I wanted Mark to feel bad, because I wanted him to make it up to his team.
He did too. In Game 5 of that series, a game we needed to win to close out the Knicks and play the Bulls in the Conference Finals, Mark Jackson played unbelievably. He recorded the first playoff triple-double in Pacers history, and it was because of him that we won the game.
Not long after that I asked him, “Do you want to be remembered by doing that shake, or do you want to be remembered as the guy that came into New York and knocked off the Knicks and got a triple-double against them?” To a guy like Mark, who saved his career last season, he saw the writing on the wall.
After he got that triple-double, I made sure we got him a ball and painted it up real nice for him. We did the same thing whenever a rookie scored his first two points in a regular-season game. I think that’s something every pro player should remember. The Celtics never really did that. They’d have balls for the major things, like 10,000 points or something. I still have some of mine. I know how important stuff like that can be to players, to be recognized.
The only ball I ever really wanted was in 1986, because we won that championship by beating Bill Fitch and his Houston team, and to me that really meant something. When the game ended, our backup center, Greg Kite, grabbed the ball, because he was on the court and the closest one to it. After the game I asked him for it, but he wouldn’t give it to me. I was named the MVP of the playoffs, and I won a car for it, and I was thinking about trading Kite the car I won for the ball. But the more I thought about it, the more I felt Greg should have just given it to me outright. I had just finished playing a great series, and made sure he was going to have a ring. Greg knew how much I wanted to beat Bill Fitch, because I respected Fitch so much, and I feel he should have offered me that ball. I never told him, but that’s how I felt. But it doesn’t matter now. It’s done.
It did teach me to be smarter about these things. Before they closed Boston Garden, which I thought was the greatest place in the world to play basketball, they had a special ceremony to commemorate the building, and they invited all the old Celtics greats to come back. Bob Cousy was there, and Bill Russell, who hardly went to anything at that point, and John Havlicek, and K. C. and Sam Jones, and some others. Anyhow, we all got on the court, and each Celtics “legend” passed the ball up the floor, from one to another. I was at the far end, the last player in the chain, and I shot the layup. Then I grabbed that ball, and I didn’t let go until I was on the plane back home.
One of the things I loved most about being a Celtic was the tradition. I loved looking up there before the game, while the national anthem was playing, and seeing all those championship banners. So many unbelievable basketball players wore the Celtics uniform, and it was important to me that I spend my entire career there.
I would love to help the Pacers create their own kind of tradition. They have some from the days they were in the ABA, but it would be awesome if our team could bring them a title and start something. I’ll tell you one thing: I don’t want to be the one that trades Mark Jackson or Reggie Miller. They deserve to finish out their careers in Indiana. If the Pacers wanted to do that, I’d have to leave.
I had been watching Reggie Miller play for years, and I knew he was the guy that would make or break this team on the court. When I got the job, there was some talk in Indianapolis that he might react negatively to me, because I would be taking attention away from him. He had always been the show in Indiana—it’s part of his game. I knew a lot would be said, but I also knew Reggie wouldn’t let me down. If he was upset, or put off, about the hoopla over me coming here, he certainly never let on. And once he got to know me, he could tell pretty quickly I don’t care about that stuff.
The thing about Reggie is he’s really a scorer more than a shooter. Yet he hits really big shots, and he’s got range. How many other guys do you know in the league who can take one or two dribbles and throw it up from 25 feet or longer? What I like best about him is he thrives on the pressure of the big shot. He wants to be the guy to take it with everything on the line. Sometimes he demands it. Some people are put off by all the trash-talking Reggie does, but it’s all a game. It’s his way of getting inside the opponent’s head, and quite often it works.
What surprised me most about Reggie is that he’s a good defensive player. He’s so much better than I thought he’d be. Reggie could be a great defensive player, but he wants to be a scorer. I keep telling him he can be both. It’s funny, really. Reggie knows a lot more about defense than he’ll let on. But I admire him, because h
e works his butt off every day. His work ethic is amazing, and not enough people give him credit for that. I can honestly say he’s been above and beyond what I thought he would be.
I remember one night during the playoffs I was trying to convince these guys they were good enough to beat the Bulls. I stood up there and pointed to Chris Mullin, and I said, “You’ve got a guy here who has played in some huge games. He’s never been to the Finals, but if you see him open, you know he’s going to pop some down for us, because he wants so badly to get there. And look at Mark Jackson, have you ever seen a guy compete as hard as him? He doesn’t have all the ability in the world. I didn’t have all the ability in the world, but it doesn’t matter if you compete. And look at Reggie Miller over there. He’s probably the greatest shot maker in the game, in the whole history of the NBA. Anytime, this guy will stick a knife in your heart.” I stopped and looked at the guys, and they were hanging on every word. Later, a couple of the players said Reggie was really touched by what I had said. It meant a lot to him. I told the guys, “I wouldn’t say it unless I meant it.”
The guy I really felt sorry for in my first season was Rik Smits. He was having problems with the nerves in his feet, and he was in agony all season. I give him credit, because he played hurt an awful lot of nights. The littlest things, like stepping on a towel, could send pain just shooting through his feet. That’s how bad it was. By January, I was really concerned that he was going to have to retire. He was trying, but there’s only so much you can push yourself. Rik came to me and said, “I don’t know, Coach. I don’t know how much more of this I can take.” I asked him if he’d be willing to see my friend Dan Dyrek, who had helped me so much with my back trouble. Rik was willing to try anything. He flew to Boston and spent a couple of days with Dan, who immediately began working on those feet. What he does is this technique called joint mobilization, which is a deep, usually painful massage that helps break up scar tissue and rejuvenate the joints and muscles and tendons in that area. Within a few visits, I could tell he was helping Rik. I knew we had no chance in the playoffs without Rik, so I was relieved that Dan had made some progress.
