Larry Bird is one of the top 10 best players of all-time in the NBA. Even after a relatively short career in the NBA, Bird signed his name on the list of the greatest to ever do it. He admitted he wasn’t the most skilled or athletic player of all, but his mind worked faster than others, which gave him an advantage over his opponents.
Besides that, he was a vicious trash talker, always trying to bring down opponents even before the game. Larry Legend was a fierce competitor that only wanted to beat others and win it all. Many people might have thought that he was like that off the court, too, but Bird is pretty cool when he’s not trying to win basketball games.
After he retired from the game, Larry became a coach and then an executive, but he also was a mentor for several players around the league. This is something that wasn’t talked about a lot, but Larry embraced that role with some players, helping them early in their careers. During a recent episode of Jackie MacMullan’s Icons Club podcast, it was revealed that Bird helped Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki and Kevin Durant.
Via Sports Casting:
Kobe Bryant described to me in detail a conversation he had with Bird about mental toughness. But when I called Larry to ask him about it, he simply said, ‘that’s private.’
Dirk was starstruck when he met Bird, who had a lot to say to them about his playing days, his approach to the game and all the things he did to become the legend he is right now.
We came with the Mavericks to a game in Indy, and Rick asked me, ‘Hey, do you want to go to dinner with Larry?’ And I said, ‘What!? Of course!’ I’m there. Tell me when and where,’ … We went to dinner with ‘Larry Legend,’ which was super cool, just to hear him talk about how he did it. What his approach was, and some of the stories that he told.
Even though Kevin Durant is from a younger generation than Kobe and Dirk, he appreciated Larry’s advice, who once called him to offer some advice about practice and how KD could benefit from that.
I got on the phone with him and just talked game, talked practice, and he gave me some gems on how to practice and how to approach shootarounds and stuff like that. It helped me out a lot. … He told me to practice — to go through every rep like I would in a game. I was doing some of that stuff, but I started doing that more afterwards. … To know that he went hard as he can every time he stepped on the floor, and to hear that from Bird at that age, that was cool.
Larry was always a very private person who just wanted to play ball and have a quiet life. Even though he was a pretty big deal in Indiana and Boston, Bird never tried to be under the spotlight. He was a beast while playing and intimidating others, but was also willing to give advice to other players to achieve what he did in the 80s when he brought the NBA back to life with Magic Johnson.
