Days After Revealing His Suffering Under Larry Bird, Reggie Miller Praises Rick Carlisle For Overtaking the Legend

Reggie Miller considers Larry Bird as one of the greatest ever to play the game, both for his killer instinct and his unparalleled basketball IQ. Miller not only battled Bird during his playing days, but also experienced his leadership firsthand when the legend became the head coach of the Indiana Pacers.

And if you ask Reggie which version of Bird he’d rather have around, he’ll pick the player version each time. Why? Well, the intensity with which Bird, the coach, approached games was not easy to cope with.

A few days back, Miller opened up about what it was like to play under the Celtics legend. He said that Bird treated every game like it was Game 7, and the players had to approach it with the same mentality.

“People talk about what was harder, playing against him or being under him as the coach? No question, being underneath him. There was so much pressure on us,” Miller had said on the All The Smoke podcast.

However, this very uncompromising mindset made Bird a successful coach. In his brief coaching stint with the Pacers from 1997 to 2000, Bird displayed exemplary qualities, not to mention setting records. He won the NBA Coach of the Year award in 1998 and led Indiana to the NBA Finals in 2000, something no coach had achieved before.

But make no mistake, those accomplishments came on the back of Bird making his players go through the hard grind, demanding more than their best day in and day out. As Reggie said, Bird was relentless in his pursuit to win games, regardless of how high the stakes were.

While Bird’s coaching tenure may have been short, it was undeniably impactful. And his coaching legacy has been taken forward now by Rick Carlisle.

When the Pacers defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers 129-109 in Game 4 to take a 3-1 lead in the ECSF, Carlisle officially surpassed Bird as the winningest coach in Pacers playoff history.

With 33 postseason wins, Carlisle moved past Bird’s total of 32. The feat was acknowledged and lauded by Miller on his Instagram story.

The timing seemed perfect, coming just days after Miller opened up about the challenges of playing under Bird.

It must be a treat for the fans of the franchise to witness Carlisle building on the Pacers’ legacy. If the Pacers win one more game, they will be making a back-to-back Eastern Conference Finals appearance under him.