Auerbach had a ‘damn good’ reason to wait
After one year delay, Red had new franchise
Maybe Larry Bird just knew.
Why else would he walk into a crowd of pro basketball’s best sharpshooters and declare himself the winner before the 1986 NBA Long Distance Shootout had even begun?
Such chutzpah is what Red Auerbach loved best about Bird.
‘‘He came out, took off his practice jacket and said, ‘You guys ought to have a huddle to decide who’s going to finish second,’ ’’ Auerbach recalled last week in a telephone interview from his Washington, D.C., office. ‘‘And then he went out and won it.’’
Bird won that 3-point contest in ’86, and then won it again in ’87 and again in ’88. Of course those NBA All-Star moments were mere sideshows to Bird’s other heroics as the star of the Boston Celtics. In 13 seasons from 1979 to 1992, he helped add three more NBA championship banners to the rafters of Boston Garden and was the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1984, ’85 and ’86.
Sure made Auerbach look smart.
Not that his image needed much help. As coach of the Celtics, Auerbach’s teams won nine NBA championships, including eight in a row. His career coaching record of 938-479 is surpassed only by Lenny Wilkens.
But Auerbach’s greatest achievement may have come in the spring of 1978 when he used the No. 6 pick in the draft to take a thin, blond country kid from unheralded Indiana State University in a place called Terre Haute. The debate over whether Bird was a small-school flash in the pan or a gem didn’t matter to Auerbach. Nor did the fact that Bird was only a junior at ISU and didn’t intend to leave school early.
A one-year delay was a small price.
‘‘I thought he was damn good,’’ Auerbach remembered of his first glimpses of Bird at Sycamore games and on television clips, ‘‘good enough to wait for. Besides, I’d done it before with Frank Ramsey.’’
Auerbach drafted Ramsey as a Kentucky junior in 1953, and began his Celtics career in ’54, averaging 13.4 points a game over nine seasons.
Bird, who will be inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday, turned out even better.
‘‘Time passes quickly, and when you’ve got a player that has the kind of talent he had, you’ve got to move fast,’’ Auerbach said.
The five teams that passed on Bird probably still regret it.
When his senior season finally arrived, Bird disproved all but the most stubborn skeptics, leading Indiana State on an improbable 33-game winning streak that brought the Sycamores to the top of the final national polls and the NCAA Finals against Earvin ‘‘Magic’’ Johnson (back then, some people still called him Earvin). ISU lost 75-64 to the Spartans, but Bird was named college basketball’s Player of the Year.
The miracles didn’t stop there.
Auerbach quit coaching in 1966 to serve as Celtics general manager and president, a position he still holds. He restructured the organization in the early 1970s, and wound up producing two NBA titles in 1974 and ’76. But by the 1978-79 season, when Bird was leading Indiana State to heretofore unseen glories, the Celtics finished 29-53. It was their worst season in 29 years.
Larry Bird to the rescue.
Within one season, Bird, a mere rookie, led the Celtics to a record of 61-21. Only twice in the franchise history had Boston won more games. When Bird’s second season ended, the Celtics were again the NBA champions.
All the while, Auerbach saw Bird as more than a physically gifted athlete. He knew how to play, and, more importantly, how to win. Bird’s basketball intellect was so keen, Auerbach later produced an instructional video ‘‘Winning Basketball’’ with Bird.
‘‘It was his work ethics,’’ said Auerbach, starting a list of Bird’s virtues. ‘‘He was as hard a worker as I’ve had. He’d come to practice always on time. And 99 times out of a hundred he’d stay an extra hour to an hour and a half, shooting, messing around. And he always played hurt. And he improved his game every year.’’
‘‘There’s a certain level you can maintain and still be a fine player,’’ Auerbach added. ‘‘Larry wasn’t satisfied with being a fine player. He wanted to be great.’’
That savvy extended off the court too, Auerbach said. And contrary to the initial East Coast reaction to this shaggy-haired kid from Indiana with a taste for country music, beer and softball, Bird was no backward, backwoods hick. Auerbach sensed that during his first few meetings with Bird during his junior season at ISU.
‘‘He was smart, extremely smart,’’ Auerbach said. ‘‘He had three guys [from Terre Haute] that advised him, and helped him choose an agent and gave him advice on everything he did.
‘‘So he didn’t come up here to Boston as some old country bumpkin who didn’t know what was going on. He had sound advice.’’
Bird chose renowned Boston-based sports agent Bob Woolf, whose list of clientele included a few other Beantown icons such as Carl Yastrzemski, John Havlicek, Luis Tiant, Doug Flutie and Jim Rice.
Auerbach once told the Quincy, Mass., Patriot-Ledger that Woolf made those first contract talks quite interesting.
‘‘When we negotiated his first contract, we agreed on a salary,’’ Auerbach said. ‘‘And then his agent, Bob Woolf, came up with all these ridiculous perks. I told him to forget it. Even Larry laughed about it. He just didn’t need those things.’’
Woolf became a part of the Terre Haute lore surrounding Bird’s magical senior year. He was in the crowd at Sycamore Field watching Bird make a cameo appearance as a first baseman for the ISU baseball team in the spring of ’79. The crowd, and surely Woolf too, held its breath when Bird and the Sycamore catcher collided in pursuit of a foul popup. Sly as ever, Bird rose slowly, finally flashing a smile that he was OK.
Woolf died at age 65, one year after Bird retired.
The audience that day at Sycamore Field was unusually large. And even now, the fascination with Bird seems strong in his home state, where he has supervised another turnaround as coach of the Indiana Pacers.
Auerbach understands Hoosiers’ bond with Bird.
‘‘They’re very proud of him, and they should be, because he not only distinguished himself on the court, but also off the court. He was never in trouble. He said the right things and did the right things,’’ Auerbach said. ‘‘He’s a little bit of an introvert, but lots of great athletes, with all that surrounds them, are that way.’’
Having turned 81 years old last Sunday, Auerbach, who still goes to his Washington, D.C., office every morning, has been around lots of great athletes. He’s spent 48 of his years with the Celtics. And with 16 championship teams and now 19 former Celtics players in the Hall of Fame, Auerbach hedges when asked to name the greatest. He does, though, say Bird is ‘‘the best forward.’’
Amid names like Bill Russell, Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, Sam Jones, K.C. Jones, Terre Haute’s Clyde Lovellette, Nate Archibald, Dave Cowens and Bill Walton, Auerbach’s compliment to Bird is a lofty one.
‘‘He’s right up there at the top of the list,’’ said Auerbach, a Hall of Famer himself.
And why? Auerbach doesn’t mention Bird’s no-look passes, uncanny shots from impossible angles or his quick-handed, pestering defense.
‘‘The best thing that exemplifies him is his confidence,’’ Auerbach said, ‘‘the making of a statement and then backing it up.’’