Larry Bird Essay

Larry Joe Bird was born on December 7, 1956 by Georgia and Claude Joseph “Joe” Bird in West Baden, Indianapolis. He is a retired NBA athlete, coach, and currently is the President for the Indiana Pacers. Larry Bird is a 3x NBA champion. He also received the awards for NBA finals MVP, two times, and been the NBA Most Valuable Player three times now. He also received many more awards. Larry Bird is married and has three children. He is currently married to Dinah Mattingly and they married in 1989. Out of his three children two are adopted, Connor and Mariah, and Larry Bird has a biological daughter from his first marriage, Corrie. Bird has four brothers also, Mike, Mark, Jeff, and Eddie. He also has a sister named Linda. Larry Bird co-owned a

hotel and restaurant. The name of the place is Larry Bird’s Boston Connection. The property of Larry Bird’s Boston Connection is now owned by Quality Inn. Larry Bird also played as himself in three movies. One of them being ‘Space Jam.’ Larry Bird acquired many nicknames for his amazing performance on the court. He had nicknames such as Larry Legend, The Hick From French Lick, and some fans even called him The Great White Hope.
Larry’s parents divorced while Larry was still in high school at Spring Valley High School in French Lick, Indianapolis. Joseph, Larry’s father, committed suicide about a year later. Larry Bird starred for the Spring Valley basketball team averaging 31 points, 21 rebounds, and 4 assists in his senior year.
Larry Bird received a scholarship to the Indiana Hoosiers in 1974 to play basketball for them.

Bird accepted the scholarship but dropped out after less than a month there because the population difference between his small hometown, French Lick, and the students in Bloomington is overwhelming. When he returned back to his hometown he enrolled in a small community college. In 1975, Larry Bird enrolled into Indiana State University. In 1979, Larry Bird and the Indiana State Sycamores reached the NCAA tournament for the first time ever in Indiana State history. Indiana State lost the game 75-64. Larry Bird only had a 33.3% shooting rate, only making 7 out of his 21 shots. Even though the Sycamores lost the NCAA championship against Michigan State, Larry Bird earned a lot of year-end awards and honors including the Naismith College Player of the Year Award. Larry Bird averaged 30.3 points, 13.3 rebounds, and 4.6 assists per game. This lead Indiana State to an 81-13 record. In 1977 Larry Bird participated in the 1977 Summer Universiade, but some call it the IX Summer Universiade, which took place in Sofia,

Bulgaria.
In 1978, Larry Bird was drafted to the Boston Celtics with the sixth overall pick in the NBA draft.

Larry Bird did not sign immediately, what he did was finish his final season with Indiana State before signing a 5 year $3.25 million dollar contract with the Boston Celtics. This made Bird the rookie to receive the highest contract deal in the NBA in the league’s history at the time. Shortly after he was drafted, a new NBA draft rule occurred called the ‘Bird Collegiate Rule’ which prevented teams from drafting players before they were ready to be drafted. Later in 1978, Larry Bird participated in the men’s basketball event called the ‘World Invitational

Tournament’.
In 1979 Larry Bird was drafted to the Celtics and he improved the team’s win total by 32 games. The Boston Celtics were tenth in the Eastern Conference the year before, but when Larry Bird played for the Celtics in 1979, he brought the team to first. At the end of this season, Bird was given the award of Rookie of the Year and selected to the All-Star team. In the conference finals, the Celtics got eliminated by the Philadelphia 76ers.
Before the 1980-1981 season, the Boston Celtics acquired Robert Parish, who at the time played for the Warriors, and Kevin McHale in the draft. Parish, McHale, and Bird will form a legendary trio for the Celtics. The Celtics advanced to the conference finals against the 76ers and the Celtics fell behind 3-1, but caught up and won the conference finals to advance against the Houston Rockets in the NBA Finals. They also won the NBA Finals against the Rockets but Bird didn’t win the NBA Finals MVP Award, teammate Cedric Maxwell did.
At the 1982 All-Star Game, Bird scored 19 points and achieved the All-Star Game MVP Award. At the end of the 1982-83 season, Bird received his first All-Defensive Team selection. He was also the runner-up in the Most Valuable Player Award voting, which Moses Malone won. In the Conference Finals, The Celtics faced the 76ers for the third year in a row, losing in seven games. Bird was very unlucky in the next season as well, he was runner-up again in the Most Valuable Player voting, again to Malone, and his team lost in the playoffs. This time, in the conference semifinals to the Milwaukee Bucks.
Larry Bird become the MVP of the 1983-84 season after averaging 24 points, 10 rebounds, about 6 assists, and around 2 steals per game. In the playoffs of this season, Larry Bird brought the Celtics to the finals again. This time, they played against Bird’s college rival, Magic Johnson, and the Los Angeles Lakers. The series went into 7 games with Boston winning the series 4-3. Larry Bird averaged 27.4 points, 14 rebounds, and 3.6 assists per game. Before the start of the next season, Boston made a trade that paid off by trading Cedric Maxwell for the All-center Bill Watson, a player who got injured a lot in his previous NBA years, but they brought the Celtics to 67 wins.
In 1986, Larry Bird won the Three-Point Shootout event making this his third consecutive Three-Point Shootout championship. A record he shares with Craig Hodges, the runner-up in the 1986 Three-Point Shootout. Larry Bird became the third NBA player to achieve three consecutive MVP Awards while averaging 25.8 points, 9.8 rebounds, 6.8 assists, and 2 steals per game. In the playoffs in the ‘86 season, the Celtics lost only one game in the first three rounds. They played the Rockets in the finals and won the finals in just six games.
In the 1987 season, the Boston Celtics would make their last Finals appearance before Larry Bird announces retirement. In the Finals, The Celtics played against the Los Angeles Lakers, a team that achieved 65 wins in the season with the help of Larry Bird’s friend off the court and rival on the court, Magic Johnson. The Celtics lost in six games. In the next season, the Celtics made it only to the Eastern Conference Finals, losing to the Detroit Pistons. In the 1980’s, either Boston or the Lakers played in every NBA Finals. Together, Larry Bird and Magic Johnson achieved eight NBA championships in the 1980’s. Bird got three and Johnson got five.
In the 1988 season, Larry Bird had the best season of his career, according to statistics. The Celtics still didn’t make the Finals this year. The Celtics lost in the Eastern Conference Finals, again to the Detroit Pistons in six games. In the 1988-89 season, Bird played only the first six games before having to have bone spurs in both of his heels surgically removed.
In 1989, Larry Bird made a return to the Boston Celtics but back problems made him do worse than he probably would’ve played in the early to mid 1980’s.
In the next few seasons, Larry Bird missed a lot of games because of back problems and a compressed nerve root in his back. Bird had surgery to remove the nerve root. In 1992, the final season before retiring, Larry Bird played in “The Dream Team” with Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, and many other NBA stars in Barcelona, Spain for the Olympics.The Olympics for basketball ended on August 8, just four days before Larry Bird announced his retirement. Before his retirement, Larry Bird ranked 27th in the NBA for his amount of steals he had in his whole career. He had a spectacular 1556 steals.
In 1992, the Celtics hired Bird as a special assistant in the front office for the Pacers. He stopped working there when he got the opportunity to be the Indiana Pacers coach, even though he never had any coaching experience. In the 1997-98 season, Larry Bird pushed the Pacers to an outstanding record of 58-24 record, the all-time best for the Pacers. Larry Bird received the Coach of the Year Award making him the only person to ever achieve the MVP Award and Coach of the Year Award. Following through with his promise of only coaching for three years, he resigned in 2000.
Three years later, Bird went back to the Pacers, but this time being the President of Basketball Operations. This meant Larry will be supervising all team personnel, draft selections, and coaching moves. After the 2011-12 season, Bird was given the award of NBA Executive of the Year and on June 27, 2012 Larry Bird announced he will have Donald Walsh replace him because he will be leaving the Pacers. He claims health issues is the cause of him leaving. He returned to the Pacers on June 26, 2013 as the same position he had before, President of Basketball Operations.