Larry Bird may have played in the NBA a long time ago now. But, the Hick from French Lick is still clearly one of the best small forwards in the history of the NBA. In fact, the man is perhaps only behind LeBron James in that regard, who is arguably the greatest of all time.
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However, even in his incredible career, the man sometimes can across players who could become stopgaps that were hard to break through. And on one occasion, a young Dennis Rodman strived to become one of them.
As you might expect, that didn’t end too well for the man.
Dennis Rodman couldn’t keep up with Larry Bird for too long before getting dominated
Dennis Rodman came into the league as a defensive specialist. And while that is very good, the downside was that he could score very little, to absolutely no points.
However, that didn’t matter too much. After all, during his time with the Pistons, he was used just right in every game. Heck, the man often even guarded the other team’s best player expertly.
However, when it came to guarding Larry Bird in 1988, the man may have just bitten off far more than he could ever hope to chew.
Just take a look at it happen in the short YouTube clip below.
In Rodman’s defense, the man did seem to keep up pretty well with Bird at first, even forcing him into some bad shots.
However, as it always is with the greats, that proved to be nothing more than motivation for Larry Bird.
And so, in the end, it truly did turn into Dennis Rodman’s worst nightmare.
Guess some things are just fated to happen.
Who had the last laugh?
At face value, most fans at the time probably thought the number Larry Bird would have more rings. And to be fair, the Celtics legend did win 3 NBA titles, which is 3 more than most players in NBA history.
However, while Dennis Rodman may not have been the best individual player, he was a serial winner. And in the end, the man retired with a monster 5 NBA championships.
We don’t think Larry will ever be too happy about that one.
