For Boston, it was love at first sight
From outset, columnist says, ‘We all thought he was wonderful’
As Bob Ryan tells it, The Pass was a thing of beauty, magical and almost ethereal.
It was in the fall of 1979, while Larry Bird was attending the Boston Celtics’ rookie camp in Marshfield, Mass., that Ryan, a sportswriter and columnist for the Boston Globe, was assigned to cover the camp.
Aside from a college game Bird’s junior year at Indiana State, it was one of the first times Ryan had seen Bird in person.
During one of the early sessions, Ryan recalls, the lanky 6-9 forward came up with the ball on a long rebound at the defensive end of the court and spun around to get the ball up the court. What happened next is something Ryan says he’s seen only once.
According to Ryan, Bird flung an underhand bullet pass 50 feet downcourt, well in front of his running teammate. But the ball had enough backspin when it hit the floor to bounce back into the player’s hands.
‘‘I’d never seen anything like it,’’ said Ryan, an erudite observer of the game who began covering the Celtics in 1969. ‘‘It was just stunning that everything we had heard about his passing was true.’’
When Ryan later questioned him about the pass, Bird told him that he had learned it on the tartan-surface floor at Hulman Center. Bird told him The Pass could only be made on an artificial floor and not on a true wooden floor.
‘‘Nobody saw anything like that again,’’ Ryan said as only a mythologist could.
The venerable sportswriter is a virtual encyclopedia of Larry Bird knowledge, having more statistics and trivia about the media-shy Bird committed to memory as anyone alive.
In fact, he wrote the book on Bird.
The two collaborated to write Bird’s autobiography, ‘‘Drive.’’
Prior to The Pass, the only time Ryan had caught a glimpse of Bird was during a 1978 game at Hulman Center.
Ryan said he had caught wind of a ‘‘phenomenon’’ at Indiana State that the Celtics were looking at.
The night before he was to cover a Providence at Michigan State game, Ryan decided to drive to Terre Haute from Indianapolis to see the phenomenon that was playing in an obscure corner of the athletic world, a place previously outside the reach of the national sports spotlight.
‘‘The idea that there would be a great player at Indiana State would have raised a few eyebrows,’’ he said. But he was indeed watching a great player at Indiana State as Bird and the Sycamores played NIT opponent and rival Illinois State.
‘‘He put on a great show,’’ Ryan recalled, ‘‘and I remember coming away thinking I had seen something very special.’’
The next night, while covering Providence and Michigan State, he saw another college ‘‘phenom’’ who would the following year face ISU in the NCAA championship game and would have his career forever linked with Bird’s — none other than Earvin ‘‘Magic’’ Johnson.
‘‘I believe that the single greatest achievement in basketball history was Larry Bird dragging Indiana State to the NCAA championships,’’ Ryan declared, adding he was ‘‘completely sold’’ on Bird’s abilities from the moment he laid eyes on him.
‘‘I had no doubt in my mind that [Bird] would be one of the handful of great forwards that ever lived. And he turned out to be the best.
‘‘That was the only time I saw him play [in Terre Haute] until he was a pro.’’ Ryan later saw Bird and the Celtics play preseason exhibition games at Hulman Center through the mid-1980s.
Aside from The Pass, Ryan recalled another moment from Bird’s rookie camp days at Marshfield.
According to Ryan, former Celtics coach Red Auerbach would conduct the Marshfield rookie camp alongside a high school and college basketball camp. Some of the sessions took place on outdoor courts.
One day Harry Mangurian Jr., the team owner at the time, dropped in on the rookie camp for a visit, Ryan said. When Mangurian saw Bird, the highest-paid rookie to that point, playing outdoors on the asphalt courts, ‘‘He just about had the big one right there.’’
In Boston, Ryan said, ‘‘the fans accepted [Bird] without qualification.’’
On the team, things were a little different. The highly-touted rookie had to prove himself first.
‘‘I think everyone had a little skepticism,’’ Ryan said. ‘‘People just wanted to see if this white guy could compete.’’
Everyone had heard about the skinny kid from French Lick, Ind., who was making national headlines for his sharpshooting capabilities, his description-defying passes and incredible knack for the game.
But he had to be tested before he was accepted.
‘‘People wanted a piece of him,’’ Ryan said.
They expected a soft, finesse player.
‘‘The first thing people found out about him is Larry is tough — physically and mentally tough. Guys that wanted to get physically tough with Larry didn’t faze him at all,’’ Ryan said. ‘‘He was strong.’’
During his debut season, Bird was named Rookie of the Year and was also named to the All-NBA and All-Star teams after leading the Celtics to a league-best 61-21 record, a 32-game improvement over the previous season.
Bird proved ‘‘he wasn’t just a white hype or a white hope. He was a truly great player,’’ Ryan said.
The fans loved Larry from his rookie season, when, Ryan says, Bird was only ‘‘three-quarters’’ the player he was to become. ‘‘But if that was as good as he was ever going to get, that would be great. We all thought he was wonderful. And he was.’’
But Bird had difficulty adjusting to the growing media attention.
‘‘He just didn’t have any feel for the fact that he was going to be a celebrity,’’ Ryan said. ‘‘He didn’t like it at all.
‘‘But he fell into a normal pattern of being a prominent player on a professional sports team in a media-hungry town.’’ Thus, Bird had to face the media.
Ryan said he would talk about the game, but he would not discuss personal issues. ‘‘He wasn’t going to stand for that.’’
The first time Ryan sat down with Bird for an in-depth interview was for an article in US magazine. The two met at the home of Bob Woolf, Bird’s agent.
‘‘He was polite, but not very forthcoming. Enough to get a story done,’’ Ryan remarked of Bird.
Eventually, Bird became more media savvy. ‘‘He liked setting the agenda and he learned how to use the press to get a message out to the fans,’’ said Ryan.
He said Bird once looked at the clock during a postgame press conference and found it only lasted 10 minutes. ‘‘Once he realized it was only 10 minutes, he relaxed and enjoyed it more.’’
Though he loved the fans, he hated the off-court attention, Ryan remarked.
‘‘He did like Boston and he loved the fans. He felt he was playing in front of the most appreciative fans in the world. But there was a price he had to pay being Larry Bird.’’
He gradually learned how to scope out restaurants for easy access to enter and exit quickly and learned to arrive at a theater just as the movie was starting so he wouldn’t attract undue attention.
When Bird decided to leave the Celtics organization to coach the Indiana Pacers last year, Ryan said it devastated diehard fans.
‘‘People blamed the Celtics for not being able to accommodate Larry Bird. People felt uneasy and upset that he is not in the employ of the Celtics and that he is, in effect, with an enemy of the Celtics.’’
But he adds, ‘‘it’s a perfectly natural place for Larry to be. It was so much more palatable and so much more comfortable to him. But if he had gone anywhere else [besides Indiana], it would have been really, really upsetting.’’
According to Ryan, there will always be a spot in the heart of Bostonians for their adopted son.
‘‘There isn’t going to be another Larry Bird.’’
Disproved skeptics: Expecting a soft, finesse player, Bird’s first Celtic teammates soon learned was ‘‘physically and mentally tough,’’ says Bob Ryan.