Larry Bird
Larry Bird
Larry Joe Birdis an American retired professional basketball player who played for the Boston Celtics of the National Basketball Association. Since retiring as a player, he has been a mainstay in the Indiana Pacers organization, currently serving as team president. Drafted into the NBA sixth overall by the Boston Celtics in 1978, Bird started at small forward and power forward for thirteen seasons, spearheading one of the NBA's most formidable frontcourts that included center Robert Parish and forward Kevin McHale...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBasketball Player
Date of Birth7 December 1956
CityWest Baden Springs, IN
CountryUnited States of America
Me and Reggie go way back. I've seen him from him developing as a young player to us retiring his jersey. That's pretty awesome.
Obviously, we're very happy about getting a player of his caliber. He's one of the best shooters in the league and we definitely feel he can come in and help us right away.
We're glad this is over with. We wanted to be patient with this one because Ronnie is a heck of a player and someone's always going to take a chance on someone like that.
We would like to get a deal done. We're looking at every option. Teams continue to call us every day, but we're going to do what's right for the franchise and not just do a deal to do one. We want somebody who is going to fit in with this team.
I've got a theory that if you give 100 percent all of the time, somehow things will work out in the end.
It seemed like our team was going to the West Coast, stopping off at cities and our players were worried about being traded. Our time for excuses are over.
Won't be much golf this off-season. It's going to be a working summer.
We're still looking and seeing what we can do. We like our team, we're very deep, but we don't like where we're at financially. We'll see what we can do.
Over the last four, five years, you've seen some of the things, and maybe we did bend over too much for Ronnie to try to help him. But I can sleep good at night, knowing we did the best we could.
About all our good high school players are going out of state. ...That's something that probably hurts more than anything. It's very important to try to keep our kids in-state. That's how you have an identity.
That's wild. That is really wild. That's a lot of points, I'm telling you. There's no question how good he is, but when you start throwing numbers around like that, it's unbelievable. It would be hard to believe if you didn't know it was true.
There were a lot of doubts. I had an opportunity to play against Reggie. After the first two or three times, there was no doubt they made the right decision.
There were some concerns, but I'm a little different. I think we will get a commitment out of our best young players. And the guys that are young now won't be so young by the time (the 2008 Summer Games) comes.
This franchise needs to get into the playoffs. You get into the playoffs, and things can happen. Obviously, we're not going to win a championship, but maybe it's something we can build off of for next year.