They don’t call Larry Bird “Larry Legend” for nothing. The Hick from French Lick is one of the best players in basketball history, but as amazing as his game was on the court, he was even more legendary as a trash-talker. Bird once famously walked into the locker room before the 1988 3-Point Contest and asked, “Who’s coming in second?” before going out and winning his third consecutive title. There are countless other stories of him talking big and backing it up.
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Bird played on so many great Boston Celtics teams throughout the 1980s, and his longtime teammate Kevin McHale witnessed many of his most legendary trash-talking moments first-hand.
McHale once appeared on The Dan Patrick Show and told the former SportsCenter anchor about a time when Bird staked the Celtics out to an early lead against the Phoenix Suns, then proceeded to have one of the worst fourth quarters of his career before finally saving the day at the buzzer.
The Celtics trailed with just one second left and had the ball out of bounds near mid-court. “So he tells the Phoenix bench, tells the coaches, ‘Yeah, I’m just fixin’ to bust a three on you guys and just go home. I’m tired of this,'” McHale remembers.
Sure enough, Bird nailed a three right in front of the Suns bench, and he turned and told them, “I told you so!” before going to the locker room.
This ended up being one of the most famous shots of Bird’s career, as he threw it up off one leg and hit nothing but net to win it. “He just had such supreme confidence,” McHale said, so when he said he was going to do something, no matter how improbable it seemed, his teammates learned to believe him.
Larry Bird was full of surprises throughout his career
Bird saw the court like few other players ever have. For the NBA’s 75th anniversary, McHale recounted a story of how Bird hit him with a backdoor pass at practice by spinning the ball, shocking him so much by its inventiveness and accuracy that he nearly pulled a hamstring catching it.
“It popped back up, and it hit me in my hands, and he just said, ‘You get open and I’ll hit ya.'” McHale said he tried to perform a similar pass once, but gave up after he threw it out of bounds.
McHale is an all-time great player and a Hall of Famer himself, so to hear him talk about Bird’s ability and confidence in such reverent tones should tell basketball fans all they need to know to understand that Bird was a true one-of-a-kind player.
For more content and behind-the-scenes stories from those great Celtics teams, the Max documentary Celtics City puts a new episode out weekly and has some really wonderful nuggets. Five episodes are currently out, with another four on the way.
