Larry Bird is one of the greatest basketball players of all time. Larry Legend was known for talking all the trash in the world and then backing it up by dropping buckets on the heads of even the most elite defenders. His ability to shoot the ball and play well under the pressure made him a 3-time NBA champion and a 3-time NBA MVP, and the Eastern Conference Finals MVP is now named after him, with Jimmy Butler and Jayson Tatum fighting it out for the honor.
Stories about Bird are legendary. Every fan knows about the time he walked into the locker room ahead of a three-point shooting contest and asked who would be second to him. But while most players stopped talking trash after their retirement, it seems Bird was still more than willing to let players at scrimmages and workouts have it, as recently revealed by Iman Shumpert:
“You got to deal with he getting the ball whenever he wanted. “You a b****, you can’t do nothing about it. There ain’t nothing you could do about it. [How Larry Bird use to play] They said all that sh** is real. That’s it. All that sh** is dead serious. They say he [Bird] really liked that.”
“When he came round now he don’t even like hold back chirping like he’ll tell you, yeah you wouldn’t do that show unless you do that sh** not even one bit.”
Bird’s skills didn’t magically go away with age, so it’s easy to imagine that he could still cook some youngsters on his day in workouts even after he retired. The fact that Bird continued to talk trash to players is also a testament to the respect that he is held in by players that have come after him. Not a lot of legends could also get away with it, but then again, not all legends are Larry Bird.
