Boston Celtics
“I just laugh at these people today,” McHale said of modern players who doubt Bird’s greatness.
Larry Bird [left] and Kevin McHale [right] AP Photo/Stephan Savoia,
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Larry Bird has one of the best basketball resumes of all time.
He collected three titles, two Finals MVP awards, and a dozen NBA All-Star selections during his playing days. He made first-team All-NBA in nine of his 13 seasons with the Celtics.
But, there are still some people who question whether Bird’s game would translate to the modern NBA in the same way that it did in the 1980’s.
Fellow Hall-of-Famer Kevin McHale has a message for those who doubt that Bird would be anything less than a superstar in today’s game. He told The Boston Globe’s Adam Himmelsbach that such thoughts are laughable coming from current players.
“These are the same dudes that can’t guard [Lakers star] Luka Doncic, and Luka Doncic is lighting them up,” McHale said. “And I’m thinking, ‘Larry is bigger, stronger, faster, and meaner than Luka Doncic. And if Luka is lighting these dudes up, it’d be a five-alarm fire what Larry would do.’ ”
Doncic led the league in scoring this season for the second time in his career. He is coming off of his sixth first-team All-NBA appearance. The 6-foot-8, 230-pound guard averaged 33.5 points, 8.3 assists, and 7.7 rebounds this season. Yet, he doesn’t have an NBA MVP award.
Bird won three consecutive MVPs and had an eight-year run of finishing at least in the top-3 of the MVP voting.
The NBA – and the Celtics in particular- have embraced the 3-point shot in recent years. Bird is a three-time 3-point contest champion who shot .376 from 3-point range for his career.
But, the 6-foot-9-inch forward was much more than just a shooter. He grabbed 10 rebounds per game, and shot .509 percent from the field for his career. He was able to score from anywhere on the floor, and he made three straight all-NBA defensive second teams during the early part of his career.
“I just laugh at these people today,” he said. “Larry would go by you a hell of a lot faster than Luka would go by you. He was a straight-line driver, and he was also just a horse.”
Bird played in at least 74 games in each of his first eight seasons with the Celtics despite battling back problems. He was a durable star during a time before load management became a thing. McHale told the Globe that advances in sports science would have helped Bird “dominate” today’s game.
It’s been 34 years since Bird last played for the Celtics. McHale remains confident that Bird’s game would be just as strong in this era as it was back in the day.
Khari A. Thompson
Khari Thompson covers professional sports for Boston.com. Before joining the team in 2022, Khari covered college football for The Clarion Ledger in Jackson, Miss.
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