【】Make no mistake, Larry Bird was always
There's a weirdly introspective aspect to seeing your sports heroes age, and it hit again Wednesday. 。
Make no mistake, Larry Bird was always 。 old 。to most of us of a certain age -- but he was never 。 that。old. If you're in your 20s or 30s today, he was the guy who came right before Jordan and Shaq and the other hoops heroes who hooked us as kids and made us sports fans for life. Bird was the just over the horizon in the rearview mirror -- but still within signal range. 。
SEE ALSO:On getting older: Kobe and LeBron as the NBA pages turn 。SEE ALSO:On getting older: Kobe and LeBron as the NBA pages turn 。 Now he's 。old old 。 , which has unfortunate implications for the rest of us as well. Yup, Bird turned 60 on Wednesday. 。Sixty! 。
Where do the years go? But enough sentimental rumination. This is also a time to look back.。
Bird's accomplishments and accolades are legion, but perhaps no performance stands out in the popular imagination like the time the now-60-year-old hoops legend scored 60 points against the Atlanta Hawks in 1985. Hawks star Dominique Wilkins later said the night was "like living in a video game." 。 Bird's most iconic shot that night didn't even count. The deep,deeeep 。
three-pointer below came after the ref's whistle, so it didn't make the box score. But members of the Hawks bench -- ostensibly Bird's opponents on that 1985 night -- melting into hysterics like giddy fans after Bird sinks the shot is etched into basketball lore forever. 。
It wasn't the only time Bird elicited such a reaction from his opponents that night, however. Here's the Hawks bench marveling and squirming at a Larry Legend floater. 。
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On March 12, 2005 -- 30 years to the day after Bird dropped 60 on Atlanta -- Boston.com published a must-read oral history of the game and its place in basketball history. 。
The oral history, and Bird's epic performance, provides insight into everything that makes the Celtics star an eternal member of the basketball pantheon. 。
There's his hyper-competitiveness, encapsulated by how Bird viewed match-ups with Wilkins. 。
GLENN “DOC” RIVERS, Hawks guard, 1983-1991: He saw Dominique as this up-and-coming player and he just tortured him, mentally. He tortured all of us. He was calling shots ‘off the glass, who’s next, where you want this one from’ and he just made one after another. When he got to about the 55th point you knew it was something special. 。
There's his predilection for trash talk. 。
ROBERT PARISH, Celtics center, 1980-94: He told us at halftime that nobody could stop him so just give him the ball and get out of the way. Then he went out and started taunting the Atlanta players on the floor, the ones on the bench, their coaches, even the referees. He was talking so much trash he was buried in it. It was one of those nights when he could have drop-kicked the ball in. I loved it. 。
And there's Bird's somewhat curmudgeonly, aw-shucks public-facing persona. 。
"If you watch the tape, the game really sucked," he told Boston.com. "That wasn't the kind of game I like to play in. Nobody was guarding anybody, the ball wasn't moving good." 。
Bird added: "People get caught up in points, but I can’t say it’s in the top 20 of my favorite games. I had games where I scored just 15 or 16 points, but I played excellent basketball in my mind, I did a little bit of everything." 。
Now here are full highlights from his 60-point night. 。Happy 60th birthday, Larry, and thanks for being legendary -- even if, on this 2016 Wednesday, you're making the rest of us feel old by association. 。