Larry Bird once blew up the Orange County record in his breakout high school game and made his dad walk from their house to see it.
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Bird at 6’9, having skills like a guard started his journey towards one of the greatest players of all time much earlier than when he came into the league in 1979.
It started when he was in the Springs Valley High School, French Lick, and was doing some extraordinary things on the basketball court every other night.
Coming from a strict background of a war veteran father, Larry never had the privilege of performing in front of his parents because they did not even own a car to show up to his games. But on a certain day, he did something which made his dad walk down to the game.
Larry Bird made his dad walk down to a game by scoring around 30-points at half-time
Bird’s father, Joe, had an alcohol problem which was the reason for his bad relationship with his mother Georgia.
They never had the environment where a couple would ideally go to watch their kid’s game who clearly has the potential to make it to the grandest stage of basketball despite living just half a mile away from the school gym.
But that changed for a night when Larry Legend was about to give Orange County its best high school game and thankfully his uncle was in attendance.
“There was one night when I had a helluva game going. I had 30-something points in the first half and people were thinking I was going to break the Orange County record. My dad was at home. He didn’t go to many games.” Larry told Dan Shaughnessy in an exclusive interview in 2001.
He continued, “Well, my uncle called him at halftime and said, ‘You’d better get down here. Your boy is going to do it tonight.’ We didn’t have a car, but he walked over. I ended up with 54 points and 38 rebounds,”
Bird was bound for the legendary career he would have in college at Indiana State as well as in the NBA afterwards. But that couldn’t help his dad in any way to deal with his alcohol abuse.
That problem led to Joe and Georgia’s divorce in 1974 and Joe’s suicide just a year later. That’s one reason why Bird was as brittle as he was and generally never opened up to people who were even close to him.
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Torching the legends of the game day in and day out and creating a legacy of his own while unknowingly popularizing his sport and making it one of the best in the world. That’s one way to deal with mental issues.
