Bird Is All Far’d Up About His Comeback

Larry Bird was back, not in short pants but wearing a gray pin-striped suit and starched white shirt. He was at New Jersey’s Meadowlands Friday night, shouting to his Indiana Pacers on the court, coaching the first game of his life, at least the first one that counted in the NBA standings. A Nets fan heckled him: “Lar-ry, call time out, Lar-ry. ... This isn’t French Lick, Larry, this is East Rutherford. . . . We’re lovin’ ya, Lar-ry, we’re lovin’ ya. ...”

Bird didn’t seem to hear the taunts any more than the prolonged cheers that had welcomed him back after five years in retirement. Bird was preoccupied with his hopes, then with the Pacers building a 13-point lead, finally with his players blowing it.

He rubbed his hand through his thick yellow hair as he watched them let victory slip. “We should have won this game,” he told them after the 97-95 setback, then repeated the words to the massed media attending his return. “We gave this game away.”

You could feel his anguish. His words were earnest. “I’d like to have had this one because we played well in the first half. Once you have a team down by 13 you got to have a toughness where you put ‘em away. You just can’t let ‘em get back in the game. Once you let a team come back, especially a home team, the crowd gets goin’, the referees get goin’, and it makes it tougher. The third quarter is what killed us. I always felt as a player that the third quarter, you got to come out of the locker room, you got to be fired up.”

Far’d is how he pronounced it. “I tried to tell these guys that, but we went out and made three turnovers right away.”

Had this been a new experience then, a reporter asked.

“No, I’ve seen it all,” Bird said without hesitation. “I’ve seen everything that’s happened out there.”

Near the close of his news conference after the game, Bird shot an aphorism as deftly as one of the precision passes he used to throw for the Boston Celtics, which could have had him as coach but instead chose a proven Rick Pitino. Hoosiers live by aphorisms, and Bird’s sayings are posted in gyms throughout the state. Now he said firmly in his native twang: “I hate to lose more than I like to win.”

Now came the first official stop on Bird’s coaching itinerary. He walked in the back door of New Jersey’s Continental Airlines Arena. A media horde awaited. It was 11 a.m., time for the game-day shoot-around. Except for a dark-blue Pacer sweatsuit, the 6-foot-9 figure looked familiar: blond hair, pale blue eyes, complexion the color of flour. Sometimes he’d grasp a ball, but he’d always toss it to somebody. During free throw practice, he stood under the basket, caught the balls and threw them back to the shooter. He’d smile at the small talk among the players. Then he answered all the reporters’ questions.

The difference between this day and his first game as a player?

“Had the ball in my hands at that time. Now I don’t. Somebody else has got to go out and perform well for me to look good.”

Did that worry him?

“Not really. I know what the team’s capable of doing. They’ve been working hard. They’re in great condition. Now it’s up to them. They’ve got to play good solid defense. We’re not a team with a lot of foot speed. But we’ll work around that. We’ve got to rely on each other at the defensive end, give a lot of help to each other. The defensive end is where you win basketball games.”

Did he feel pressure?

“I don’t ever feel pressure. I never have. I used to get a little nervous sometimes before I played. But I never felt pressure in my life.”

Hasn’t he stolen the spotlight that his star player, Reggie Miller, craves? “I could care less about it. Maybe Reggie likes it. I don’t like it. He knows I don’t like it. But it’s my job. I can’t tell the press not to talk to me. I’m just here to do my job.

“I’m not trying to take anything from these players. All I’m trying to do is get them to play good basketball. And I think they understand that. It’s a players’ league. They know I know it’s a players’ league. When I played, I always thought it was a players’ league.”

Great basketball players, as players in other sports, rarely make successful coaches. Perhaps the best at both in the NBA has been the Atlanta Hawks’ Lenny Wilkens. Still, he was no icon like Bird. “It’s a patience or tolerance level that they don’t have because the game came easy to them,” said John Nash, the Nets’ general manager and former Washington general manager. “But Larry was a thinking man’s player and I think that will translate as a coach.”

That evening, Bird attended to still more questions before the game from an even greater number of reporters.

Were the Pacers ready?

“I’m sure they’ll tell you they’ve worked very hard. I feel one thing you have to have is conditioning, and I wouldn’t put these guys through anything that I didn’t go through. But . . . watching them react to what I have to say about conditioning is really mind boggling at times. But it’s true. I tell them exactly how I feel about the game and what they should do to prepare themselves.”

What brought him back at age 40?

“Boredom. Something to do. This opportunity opened up for me and this is one job I thought if I had an opportunity to get, I’d take. It’s in Indiana, they had a veteran team, I was feelin’ good. So I thought I’d try it.

The last minutes before the tap, Bird sat with his long legs crossed and watched his players shooting. Photographers and cameramen all but surrounded him. A photographer took his picture, then walked up and shook his hand. Another, kneeling in front of him, almost tumbled at his feet; the two exchanged nervous glances. A man brought forward a young girl. “Mr. Bird,” he said. The coach turned his head ever so slowly. Finally: “Hi.” He didn’t say much more.

He had to weather almost 10 minutes of orchestrated bedlam introduced by the inescapable Michael Buffer: “Let’s get ready to . . . “ Bird’s expression seemed to say: “Oh, geez.” The arena was darkened. The “Wild Pigs Motorcycle Club,” beefy guys in leather vests, roared onto the court, each with a female dancer hanging on. Bird took his team and retreated under the stands.

A young boy reached out to him in the dark and Bird veered out of his way to touch hands.

After the lights came up, other fans shouted encouragement and he gave almost a secret thumbs-up, with his right hand next to his right coat pocket, never looking their way.

Finally the game was played.

Bird sat most of the time. When he sprang to his feet, it usually was to urge defensive “stops.” But New Jersey rallied with a 17-3 run. In the final minutes, a frustrated Miller made an obscene gesture to an official and continued yelling at him. Bird stepped up to diffuse the situation, talking calmly with the official. Angered later by a reporter’s question, Miller later cut off a group interview with an epithet.

Bird sat for a long time in the coach’s room, looking disconsolate. He sat with his chair tilted back against the wall, saying nothing.

Back home again in Indiana the next morning, he hated that loss just as much. Despite a short night’s sleep, he had the Pacers working in an almost empty Market Square Arena, preparing for Golden State and for the home opener in the evening. He had made his victory cry so plain to the team that its major new acquisition, Chris Mullin, called the game “huge” even though 80 more games would follow. After practice, Bird was alone with his thoughts of the opening loss.

“I don’t think you forget that one for a while,” he said. “When you have an opportunity to win games you’ve got to take full advantage of it. I told the players. I talked to ‘em last night and today, too. You’ve got to be tough, you can’t relax, when you’ve got a lead. That’s when you’ve got to bury ‘em. What really killed the momentum was when they got the ball back on missed free throws. That’s horrible. On the road, you gotta have every possession. That’s the way the game’s supposed to be played. I told ‘em, matter-of-fact-there’s no use hollerin’ and screamin’ and cursin’. But next time you’re in that situation, better make sure you do it.”

Had he gotten the urge to step onto the court in the fourth quarter and take over the game as he used to?

“Well,” he said straightforwardly, “them days are over. But” -- slight pause, as if he were picturing himself with the ball in his hands -- “I think things would have been a little different.”

He laughed as if he were joking. Actually, he meant it.

Saturday night, and people were scalping tickets on the streets in Indianapolis. The arena was packed: 16,729. Both teams were on the floor shooting around when Bird walked out. The public address announcer cried: “And now the coach of YOUR Indiana Pacers ...” Everyone stood and waved white “Back Home Again!” towels and screamed. A band struck up and they sang:

“Back home again in Indiana,

“And it seems that I can see

“The gleaming candlelight

“Still shining bright

“Thru the sycamores for me ...”

The game turned out the way they wanted it, but none more so than Bird. Another team’s scout described Golden State as “five guys running around.” In contrast, the Pacers moved the ball with crisp passes, reminiscent of their rookie coach, and when they got 13 up this time they extended the lead before settling for a 96-83 victory. “I guess they got the message,” the scout said.

“You got to put the dagger in their heart when you got a chance,” said Bird, pleased now. It was doubtful that another reporter could squeeze into his office.

“Hoosiers want him to succeed because he’s Larry Bird and he’s coaching the Pacers,” said Jason Crowe, executive director of the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame. “But Hoosiers can differentiate between playing and coaching. If Larry can’t do it, he’ll probably come right out and say, ‘I’m sorry. Guess I was a better player than a coach.’ ”

That, in fact, is close to what he said:

“I like the challenge. I’ve always liked to take the last-second shot. I hope this will turn out well for me. If not, I’ll move on. But I feel I’m capable of doing the job, and that’s why I’m here. If you prepare yourself and you got a lot of confidence in yourself, you usually do well. I’ve prepared myself for this job. I got a lot of confidence in my abilities. I think I’ll do just fine.”