Bird’s Rehab--No Pain, Plenty of Gain

A late visitor to practice wouldn’t conclude there was anything troubling Larry Bird.

On this day, Bird is firing up three-pointers. He has dunked. He has done some running around the court and some lateral shuffling along the baseline.

But right now, that’s about all Bird can do.

The Boston Celtics’ franchise player is closing in on a still unspecified return date. He has missed all but six games of the 1988-89 season because of surgery to remove bone spurs irritating his Achilles’ tendons. He isn’t able to run at a speed close to what he’d need in a game. And he has not played basketball for eight of the last nine months.

But on this day, Bird is encouraged. There is no pain after what he and trainer Ed Lacerte agree is his most grueling stretch of running so far. He is pleased.

Lacerte and team doctor Arnold Scheller, who was part of the surgical team, rave about their most celebrated patient’s work ethic and attitude. Bird, naturally, concurs.

“I think I’ve been a good patient,” he says. “Because I don’t think anybody else could come back this quick. I heal fast; I always have. And I do basically what the doctors tell me because they know more about it than I do. If you asked anybody, they wouldn’t think I’d be at this stage right now.”

Says Scheller: “Basically, I think he’s doing pretty good. We’re trying to max it out and remember, this is one highly motivated and frustrated guy right now. He has been super, and we are always testing the envelope, so to speak. But we can’t manipulate this thing. This is nature healing.”

For example, Bird recently experienced pain and swelling in his right ankle, the result of an overextended workout.

“At that point, we calmed down,” Scheller says. “But it is also time to keep moving (the process) along.”

On Nov. 15, a hobbled Bird played 16 minutes against the Miami Heat. He hasn’t played since.

Four days later, Scheller and Dr. Roger Mann removed the spurs, pronounced the surgery a success and said Bird would be sidelined for up to four months. It would be the longest this hoopaholic had been away from the game since 1975-76, when he sat out a year after transferring to Indiana State from Indiana.

“The hardest part,” Bird says, “is just waiting to see how it’s gonna feel when you get up in the morning. It is getting better, but it’s just tough getting up every morning and not knowing if it’s gonna be like it was the day before.”

He also finds the drudgery of rehabilitation, which averages four to five hours a day, extremely taxing. As his constant rehab companion, Lacerte, says, “it’s a lot easier to go through a two-hour practice than to go through rehab. He’s used to spending the time on the court and it can get tedious. And his idea of a day off is to do two hours of shooting.”

Bird has spent endless hours doing stretching exercises, riding a stationary bike, lifting weights, using muscle stimulators, climbing aerobic-type stair machines, working on a Cybex (leg-strengthening apparatus) and doing simulated running in a seven-foot deep water tank while tethered to the side.

“That’s the part he hates the most,” Scheller says. “He hates the water. He almost drowned as a kid.”

Says Bird: “To tell you the truth, I don’t really enjoy any of it. But it had to be done and it’s something that has to be done every day. You have to get your strength back. You have to work, you have to stay in some kind of shape. The only thing I really miss is getting out there and running.”

For the first six weeks after the operation, the rehabilitation program consisted of weightlifting, bike riding and a procedure to strengthen the joints around the ankles. Around Christmas, he started the swimming exercises, which are being phased out.

His average day now consists of an hour of joint strengthening, an hour of weightlifting, 20 minutes of jogging, 45 minutes of light shooting, 30 minutes on a stair machine, 30 minutes on the Cybex, then ice treatment for 20 minutes.

“It’s tough,” Bird says. “I knew it was going to be tough. You gotta motivate yourself every day to do it. They tell me what to do and I gotta do it. If I don’t do it, I just put myself that much more behind everyone else. Still, though, it’s not like playing. It’s not like you’re out there running up and down the court.”

Scheller and Lacerte have used March 1 as a date for a possible return, but neither is prepared to say just when Bird will play his first game. “We’re using time as a framework, not as a target date,” Lacerte says.

Bird says a decision will be made no later than the weekend. If he were to go, his presence in practice would be limited.

As for a return date, Bird says, “I can’t say I’m going to be back a certain day,” Bird says. “It’s still up in the air. But if it hurts on March 1, I won’t play. It’s all according to how these things (ankles) react from now till then.”

What happens when he does return? The team is indisputably struggling (22-23), and several players said things aren’t likely to change until Bird gets back.

Bird is reluctant to address the team’s ills. But he has been around enough and seen enough to know things are not as they should be.

“There are some things wrong,” he says. “There are some guys who aren’t happy. I don’t think Danny (Ainge) is pleased with coming off the bench, but that’s something he’s gotta work out and he’s gotta practice harder and play better to get back in there.”

Does he sense great expectations when he does return?

“If they just let me play and get in game shape, I think we will be a better team,” he says. “I think that the only thing that might hurt us is if the guys come in with a bad attitude or have a bad attitude about the season, or (about) not getting enough playing time, or (about) things not going their way.

“It’s going to be tough, but if everybody gets together and plays hard and Robert (Parish) keeps playing the way he does and Kevin (McHale) still does the things he does, or can do ... and if the other guys fill in, we’re going to be right back where we were a couple years ago.”