Is Bird a Day Away From Being Named to the Hall of Fame?

He came from a small Indiana town and went to a college not known for sports. His speech and dress were plain and his tastes simple -- shoot some hoops and hang out with buddies.

But his basketball skills -- and his drive to improve -- were extraordinary.

On Monday, barring perhaps the greatest oversight in sports history, Larry Bird will be named to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

“There’s nothing better than that,” said Red Auerbach, the legend who drafted the legend-to-be. “But when you come right down to it, it’s not that much of a surprise.”

Not when you consider how Bird made the most successful team in NBA history even better.

Or how his talent in every aspect of the game--shooting, rebounding, passing, defense, intelligence, diving for loss balls--led the Boston Celtics to three championships. Or how he carried Indiana State to the 1979 NCAA title game. Or how he led the NBA into the spotlight in the pre-Jordan era.

Or how he loved the game.

“Forget the Hall of Fame,” said Tommy Heinsohn, already enshrined as a Celtics player and now a team broadcaster. “If he couldn’t have played in the pros, he’d be one of the guys playing in the back yard.”

The parquet was Bird’s playground.

Boston Garden’s famous floor was home to many Celtics who made the Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass.--Bob Cousy, Bill Russell, John Havlicek among them. But none played the game like Bird, who said he won’t talk about the Hall of Fame until Monday.

Bird’s brilliance was matched by his dedication to team play. His smarts made up for his lack of speed. Jumping ability? Hustle compensated for the spring missing from his legs, leaving leapers wondering how Bird got the ball.

“Larry Bird was roundly criticized throughout his career for being unathletic and very slow,” said Bill Walton, Bird’s teammate on the 1986 championship team and a Hall of Famer. “Quickness is not a physical skill. Quickness is a mental skill. Quickness is about figuring out what’s going to be happening next before anybody else.”

But Bird needed more than instinct. He worked hard at the game from the time he was a kid in West Baden, Ind., just outside French Lick, to the end of a pro career cut short in 1991-92 by back problems.

Mel Daniels, a former Indiana Pacers center, remembers tutoring Bird as an assistant coach at Indiana State.

“We worked primarily on post moves,” Daniels said. “After every practice we would play, and for two weeks I used to beat him to death. Then he caught on and got in better shape and started beating me, and I quit.”

In his first NBA game, Bird had 14 points and 10 rebounds in a win over Houston on Oct. 12, 1979. The Celtics won 61 games that season, after winning just 29 the year before.

Robert Parish and Kevin McHale arrived for the 1980-81 season and along with Bird formed perhaps the best frontcourt in basketball history for more than a decade.

“By the end of that year I had a pretty good idea Larry would be in the Hall of Fame,” Parish said. “I never really took a step back and realized how good Larry was or Kevin was or I was or how good we were collectively until I retired.”

The Bird-led Celtics beat the Houston Rockets in the 1981 and 1986 NBA Finals and the Los Angeles Lakers for the 1984 title. He was on the 1992 U.S. Olympic team that won the gold medal.

“The great players are so competitive,” Heinsohn said. “They have supreme willpower. They just refuse to lose.”

And there were personal honors--rookie of the year in 1980, MVP in 1984, 1985 and 1986, finals MVP in 1984 and 1986, an NBA All-Star in 12 of his 13 seasons. And last season, his first as a coach, he was NBA coach of the year.

One day, Indiana Pacers president Donnie Walsh said, Bird may join John Wooden and Lenny Wilkens as the only Hall of Famers named as a player and coach.

For now, making it as a player will test Bird’s ability to mask his feelings.

“He’ll try not to show any emotion. You know Larry,” said Auerbach, the Celtics general manager who drafted Bird in 1978.