Larry Legend Becomes Larry the Coach

News item: Larry Bird to coach the Indiana Pacers.

Comment: Does this mean Magic Johnson has to find a team to coach too?

Fast times in the NBA, huh?

Rick Pitino turns down the Boston Celtics. Larry Brown considers the Celtic job. Pitino decides he wants it after all and signs for $7 million a year. Pitino asks Bird to sign on as Celtic general manager. Bird--who initiated contact with Pitino on the Celtics’ behalf--goes to the Pacers.

Bird gets $4 million for each of two seasons. Then, if he wishes, he can move into the front office. That’s a lot of money, but Pacer fans are so happy to have their Larry--all together now--back home again in Indiana, it will be two years before they even notice whether he has won any games.

That might be fortunate. Although he will be a very famous coach, Bird is still only a rookie and a perfectly inexperienced one, at that.

Nor is he taking over the colossus of the Midwest. The Pacers overachieved mightily under Brown, twice reaching the Eastern Conference finals, then shrank back to what they were when he arrived: a .500 club that had never won an NBA playoff series.

There have been successful rookies--the Lakers’ Paul Westhead and Pat Riley for two--but they had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic. Bird will have Rik Smits and Mark Jackson.

“He looks at the game from more of a coach’s mind than a player’s mind,” Pacer President Donnie Walsh said. “He’s a very bright guy and a very honest guy, as well as a very tough guy. All those qualities add up. He’d be very successful anywhere he went.”

Walsh offered Bird the job four years ago but was turned down. Happily leading a golfing retirement in Florida with his wife and child, Bird grew restless, however, intrigued by the success of former teammates Kevin McHale, now the Minnesota Timberwolves’ general manager, and Danny Ainge, now the Phoenix Suns’ coach.

However, even intimates wonder if Bird knows what he’s getting himself into.

“It would be everything Bird hates,” wrote Boston Globe columnist and former Celtic beat writer Dan Shaughnessy.

“He’d have to deal with spoiled young millionaires who think the world owes them--players with cell phones and beepers going on in the locker room at halftime. He’d have to talk to the media every day. He’d have to put his healing back to the test, flying to San Antonio and Portland and the swamps of New Jersey. He’d have to work the killer hours that transformed a nice guy like Pat Riley into a gaunt, self-important lunatic.

“And for what? Money?

“Bird’s already got more money than God. I believe he’s still got the 160 bucks he made off me in a free-throw shooting contest in 1985.”

Even as the Pacers waited for word Thursday, the Celtics were trying to woo their Larry Legend back.

“We’d love Larry Bird to be a part of the Celtics,” Pitino said at his welcome-to-Boston news conference. “Larry Bird epitomizes Celtics pride. Whatever title he wants, he can have. . . .

“It’s a career decision for him of whether he wants to be in the front office or whether he wants to be out there coaching, calling timeouts. If he wants to coach, then that is something we’ll wish him well on.”

Larry Bird epitomizes Pacer pride now. They’d better do more than wish him well, they’d better start praying for him.

No, Magic isn’t going to coach (I think). He tried it once, for 16 games. Said it felt like a lifetime.

The beat goes on. . . .

Brown goes to the Philadelphia 76ers for $5 million a season. P.J. Carlesimo gets fired in Portland with two years--at $1.4 million each--left on his contract. Phil Jackson, whose Bull contract is up but whose postseason is ongoing, is reportedly negotiating with Orlando and Golden State.

Does Magic want to coach Michael Jordan in Chicago? His Bulls could beat on Larry’s Pacers like a drum.

* TOP COACH

Pat Riley joins Don Nelson as the only coaches to win the Auerbach Trophy three times. And Riley has done it with three teams--the Lakers, Knicks and now the Heat. C11

* OUT-OF-WORK COACH

The long-rumored firing of Portland’s P.J. Carlesimo became a reality, with Trail Blazer President Bob Whitsitt saying the team needs a new playing style. C11