Bird Does Whatever Is Needed

He played 56 of 58 minutes in the last game at Milwaukee, but Larry Bird can’t understand all the fuss.

“You get paid to play basketball, and whatever it takes to get the game over, that’s what you should be able to play,” he said. “I feel I can play all day. I used to do it as a kid, I used to do it in college, I do it as a pro.”

Said Boston Celtic Coach K.C. Jones: “We’ll run it up the court one time and then walk it up the next. That’s the way we have to do it. Otherwise, we’d have nothing left for the fourth quarter.”

Said Milwaukee Buck Coach Don Nelson: “Their whole team can walk better than most people can play running hard. I don’t understand it. You say they’re tired, then they kick you in the butt.”

Said Celtic trainer Ray Melchiorre: “We train all year for this. I’ve been one of the people who felt playing more minutes helps. You don’t train for a marathon by running two, three or four miles a day. We’re in a marathon and it’s what we’ve been training for.”

Said Bill Walton: “You’re talking to a guy who plays 10 minutes a game. How would I know?”

Add Bird: He has failed to play at least 3,000 minutes in three of his previous seven seasons, and those are the only seasons in which the Celtics failed to reach the National Basketball Assn. Finals. This season, he played 3,005 minutes.

Peter King of Newsday, on Brian Bosworth, who showed up at a press conference wearing a Mohawk haircut with a rat tail, three left earrings, wire-rimmed sunglasses, cream-colored jacket and pants, blue and white tank top, loafers and no socks: “He looked more like Max Headroom than an Oklahoma linebacker.”

Trivia Time: For what National Football League teams did Glenn Davis play? (Answer below.)

Mike Tully of United Press International, on the wide-open National League East: “Last year, the Mets had a staff that scared people. Nothing about this year’s division scares anybody, unless of course you count Pittsburgh’s attendance.”

Ten Years Ago Today: On May 13, 1977, Maurice Lucas scored 27 points to help the Portland Trail Blazers beat the Lakers, 105-101, and sweep their Western Conference series. Portland went on to beat the Philadelphia 76ers in the NBA Finals in six games.

Many claim the baseball is juiced up, but Phil Garner of the Houston Astros offers this theory on why everybody is hitting home runs: “With the decrease in ozone layers, we’ve lost some of the ionized particles, so there’s nothing to hold those balls back.”

From UPI: “When the Red Sox announced Ellis Burks had just stolen his first base someone in the press box shot back, ‘and that puts him on the Red Sox’s all-time list.’ ”

From a statement by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching: “College sports have been developed from games played by boys for pleasure into systematic professional athletic contests for the glory and, too often, for the financial profit of the college.”

The statement was made in 1929.

Trivia Answer: Glenn Davis, from Army, played for the Rams. Glenn Davis, two-time Olympic 400-meter hurdles champion from Ohio State, played for the Detroit Lions.

Quotebook

Former umpire Ron Luciano, on why he preferred to work the bases: “I couldn’t tell the pitches. I didn’t know the difference between a slider and a curve. I knew a fastball because it came in rapidly.”