Pacer Pride

Larry Legend, where you been so long?

Larry Bird returns to the tiny visitors’ dressing room in the Great Western Forum tonight, where he once announced the Boston Celtics needed “12 heart transplants,” which may have turned the 1984 NBA finals into the first decided by a sneer. Mild-mannered Kevin McHale wiped out Kurt Rambis the next game, turning the series into a rumble and, finally, a Celtic triumph that gave the Showtime Lakers nightmares for a year.

Bird still carries the rivalry close to his heart, joking weeks into coaching he would never consult Pat Riley, who was “one of those Laker guys.” Riley has been gone for eight years, but to a Celtic, once an infidel, always an infidel.

The Lakers feel the same way, so it’s a special night. Bird and Magic Johnson, Larry Legend’s mirror opposite and the twin brother he never had, all at once, will surely meet to exchange hugs and jibes. What’s a Laker without a Celtic, and vice versa?

Bird may note it’s too bad Johnson doesn’t have a team. Magic may start sorting possibilities in his head--Let’s see, if I took the Detroit job, what would we need to challenge them?--before remembering his upcoming TV show, agency business, et al.

It would look enticing, because Bird has broken in so spectacularly, taking the Indiana Pacers from last season’s 39-43 also-rans to No. 1 in the East at the All-Star break.

What could be better? Back in the game! Gotham at his feet! A $4.5-million salary! Something to do!

Of course, a couple of nights before the All-Star game, the Pacer brass went to a Manhattan steakhouse and Bird joked to team President Donnie Walsh:

“Tonight would be a good time to resign.”

At least, the Pacers hope it was a joke.

Unforgettable, That’s What You Are

Unforgettable as a player, unforgettable as a coach, even if the latter career may not last as long as the former.

Unforgettable, but different. As a player, he was known for his artistry, his industry and his braggadocio. Now, he’s known for his . . . humility?

Who ever knew he had any of that?

“You have to understand that to understand him,” Walsh says. “I didn’t at first.

“You can say to him, ‘There are no players any more who can do the things you did,’ and he’ll say yeah, and he’ll mean it. He knows he’s one of the best players who ever played the game. But in his mind, he doesn’t understand what all the fuss is about. He doesn’t know why anyone would want his autograph.

“He’s a guy who’s like a [Michael] Jordan or a Magic, he walks down the street and everything stops. Magic probably enjoyed it. Larry doesn’t seek it. I think if Larry had his druthers, nobody would know who he was.”

Bird, the player, honed his game to a razor’s edge, challenged teammates to keep up, taunted opponents who couldn’t and admitted to precious few peers. Bird, the coach, is low-key, if direct, leans heavily on assistants and is content to put the game in his players’ hands.

The Pacers have been successful, ironically, because they’ve been one of the top defensive teams. The defensive scheme was installed, at Bird’s request, by assistant coach Dick Harter.

Harter didn’t even know Bird before this season, or as he puts it, “Only from watching the ball go through the basket when he took the last shot. . . .

“When I first talked to him last spring, you know, Larry isn’t going to say what you want to hear, he’s going to say what he thinks--he started out by saying he really wanted to make a commitment defensively and he believes that’s what you need to win championships.”

And so, that’s what they have.

Bird lets the other assistant, Rick Carlisle, do much of the blackboard stuff because he’s so good at Xs and O’s.

Bird reclaimed talented, defiant Jalen Rose, who had been up to here with Larry Brown and vice versa. (Once last season in Minneapolis, after Brown yelled something to him, Rose turned to his coach and yelled back, “Shut up!”)

Rose is still on the wild side, but he’s playing better than he ever has and Bird sits still for it all.

“You know, to me, growing up in Detroit, dreaming of playing in the NBA, I never even knew that Larry Bird would know my name, much less have an influence on my career,” Rose says. “So I’m just trying to make the most of this opportunity. . . .

“Being a fan, I knew a lot about Larry Bird, even though I didn’t meet him. He kind of went through the same things I went through as far as growing up, having tough times and overcoming them, being a guy who everybody tried to find flaws in rather than try to look for the things that he could do well. And he found a way to overcome it, and I’m just trying to do that myself.”

The Pacers regard their coach with something bordering on awe. Reggie Miller, perennial all-star, bane of Spike Lee, etc., said he was “excited because in the twilight of my career, I was going to get a chance to learn from one of the best players ever to play the game.”

He learned, all right. One night in Phoenix after a slow first half, Bird says he told him, “Reggie, you’ve got to give it to me.” Miller pointed out he’d taken only a handful of shots. Bird said that was the problem.

Stung, Reggie made the game-winner. A jubilant Bird ran to the locker room, enjoying it even more, perhaps, because they’d just beaten ex-teammate Danny Ainge’s team.

Winning is still fun. Bird has a team as tough-minded as he is. The Pacers, who overachieved mightily under Brown for two years, and moldered when he got antsy for the next two, have risen again in the East.

Enjoy Him While He’s Here

Of course, Bird’s only passing through.

No, not through town, through coaching.

Wherever he goes, he gets asked the same questions again: Why is he doing this, how long will he do this, etc.

How is he supposed to answer that if he doesn’t know himself?

“I never coached on any level,” he says. “I never wanted to coach. I still ask myself the question, Why am I standin’ here, talkin’ to you?”

In the meantime, he’s happy to prick everybody’s balloons. In Boston, they ask, reverentially, of course, why so many former Celtics are coaching.

“ ‘Cause they don’t have anything else to do,” he says.

How about that ’86 team with McHale, Robert Parish and Bill Walton that Bird says was the best he played on and maybe the best, period?

“We were focused when we had to be,” he says. “Hell, we even quit drinkin’ for two months. That was hard for a lot of us too.”

Perhaps it’s late in the day, and he’s tired of answering the how-does-he-like-it question for the 100th time.

“I think it stinks,” he says, “but it’s my job and I’m gonna try to finish my contract out and find something else to do.”

He jokes about leaving so often, you have to wonder how long the Pacers can keep him. A few more seasons? OK, how about the rest of this one?

He never wanted to coach. It isn’t like playing when he simply had to worry about his performance, which he had covered. Now he has to worry about things he can’t control.

Then there’s the @#$%&! media, all the time poking into his feelings.

At the news conference announcing his hiring, someone asked Bird if he was aware NBA coaches met daily with reporters.

“They used to,” he said.

Of course, he has discharged his press obligations faithfully ever since. It’s like his All-Star game boycott, when he announced he had plans to go to Florida and would keep them, no matter where the Pacers were at the break.

“What will you do when David Stern calls?” he was asked.

“He won’t get ahold of me,” said Bird.

On the appointed day, there was Bird, coaching the East, dutifully.

“I was talking to someone from the commissioner’s office,” Walsh says, “and they said, ‘You have to make sure he goes.’ I said, ‘Look, I’m telling you, if we wind up in first place on the date, he’ll be at the All-Star game. He’ll go. I won’t have to say anything to him.’ . . .

“In effect I have told him, I’m turning this franchise over to you. He has a three-year commitment to coach and Larry lives up to his commitments. I’m sure he’ll live up to his commitment. What he does with his life after that, I’m not getting into. I would like him to stay with the organization in a very high capacity.

“He’s going to have some great options. One is why not go down to the beach and do nothing?”

Why not is because Bird tried retiring to a life of golf in Florida and was “bored to death.” If he takes over the Pacer organization, he’ll still be in the game and the pay will still be seven figures. Friends say Bird would scale a sheer cliff if there was a nickel on top.

As a measure of his dedication to this coaching thing, he actually turned down more than $100,000 he could have made for doing quickie pregame TV and radio spots.

“Money means nothing,” Bird told a Boston reporter. “I didn’t get back in this for the money.”

The reporter smiled.

“That’s what Rick Pitino said and it worked for him,” Bird said, grinning.

Who knows why he came, how long he’ll stay, what he’ll do after that? Welcome to L.A., Larry Legend, it’s great having you back in that other place you belong.