Writers’ Memories of Bird

Times staff writers remember Larry Bird, basketball player, on parquet and elsewhere:

Larry Bird always said that if he were black, he’d be nobody. That’s wrong. . . .

He was not fast, he was not a lot of things. He was just a marvelous basketball player. He was always in the right place. He had the best instincts of any guy I ever saw. He could shoot like crazy. He’d flip it in from anywhere. He sort of came with the basket. . . .

When he went to Indiana, he couldn’t stand being there, because he couldn’t stand being anywhere where there were 30,000 people. So he went off to Indiana State. Everybody always said it was Bobby Knight who ran him off at Indiana, but I never really believed that. I never thought he’d be silly enough to browbeat a Larry Bird. . . .

Of all the white players, the best was either Bird or Jerry West.