An NBA Mystery: Someone Takes Bird on the Lam

WANTED--Any information leading to the whereabouts and present condition of one Larry Joe Bird. If you have any information, please communicate at once with the people on the Boston Celtics. They are most anxious to find him. Substantial reward posted. Subject is a white male Caucasian with blond hair and see-through skin, 6-9, 220, English-speaking. Was last seen in a green basketball uniform on or about May 8 sinking 17 baskets and 9 free throws against Detroit. Has since mysteriously disappeared, and management has reason to suspect a clever forgery has been put in his place since. Foul play is not ruled out. If sighted, approach with caution. Insist subject stand 30 feet from regulation basket and sink 9 out of 10. If he misses, notify police at once. If he hits, notify fire department to get him to Boston Garden at once and place under arrest impostor there wearing No. 33. If you can’t find Boston Garden, just ask for the only non-air-conditioned public building in North America. If I were the Boston Celtics, I would immediately post that ad in every post office I could find. I would comb every bus depot, train station or air terminal in New England. I’d knock on every rooming house door. I’d search through cellars. I’d pull in every heist guy in sight.

Some place, the real Larry Bird is locked in a closet, tied to a chair, imprisoned in a mountain lodge. The guy wearing his number in the basketball series with the Lakers is a clever imitation, but he’s not the real thing. It may be Rich Little. If it is, tell him his impression needs work. His Cagney, it ain’t.

Listen. When a guy on the Celtics wearing No. 33 misses 11 jump shots from the top of the key, when he throws up a cement block from the foul line, when he passes the ball like it was a flat iron, when he misses a technical foul shot, for crying out loud, what you have is one of the most outrageous impersonations of our day. A swindle. A fraud. Something for the bunco squad.

Man and boy, I have watched Larry Bird for lo, these several years now, and if this guy is Larry Bird, I’m Ernest Hemingway.

You all know what a Larry Bird is--an 88% free-throw shooter, a 50% field-goal shooter, a guy who once shot better than 40% in three-point baskets. A ball-stealer, a rebounder, the most fluid player in the game. A winner. A natural. Every time the ball came off a board or off a player, Bird was there. He just seemed to materialize around the ball. You put him in a game, you penciled in a projection of 22 to 60 points, bet the spread and got ready to hoist another flag to the Garden roof. If this wasn’t a Babe Ruth of basketball, it was at least a Rogers Hornsby.

And, what have we in this series against the Lakers? A guy who at times seems to have lost total interest in the basket. A guy who’s afraid to shoot. A guy who, like an off-guard, seems to be looking around for the open man. Larry Bird used to be the open man. He could get open in a buffalo stampede, a subway rush.

The other night in Game 5, the Larry Bird the Celtics insist is the original got off exactly five shots on goal in the first half. He made only a shocking one of them.

Now, two points in a half is not a good stat for a stone-fingered off-guard. For Larry Bird, it’s scandalous. You figure Larry Bird could score more than two on crutches, running a fever and guarded by the Gestapo. The conclusion is inescapable: The real Larry Bird is locked in a room some place struggling against his ropes and trying to tear tape off his mouth or float notes down through the transom to the streets below crying, “Help! I’m being held prisoner against my will! Call the police! I’m the real Larry Bird, this other guy is, so to speak, a pale copy. Get me out of here before he ruins my reputation --to say nothing of Red Auerbach’s disposition!”

The Larry Bird in this series insists nothing is wrong with him. “I just got the ball in to Kevin (McHale) in the post, and he never sent it back. He was getting his shots. So I wasn’t getting mine. I don’t care who scores. So long as we score.”

It sounded good. You can see how tricky this copy is. But real Bird-watchers aren’t fooled. With three minutes to go in the half Friday, Celtic Coach K.C. Jones benched Bird. He said it was for a rest, but it looked more like taking the pitcher out who was giving up home runs. The Lakers, encouraged, spurted off and, in effect, iced the game, taking a 64-51 halftime lead.

You think Jones would have sat down the real Larry Bird? No, this Bird in a gilded cage is just a clever makeup job. As the poet Shelley might have said: “Bird thou never wert.”