We’ve talked a lot about Larry Bird in this space, largely because Bird had a genius for basketball that is exceedingly rare. A lot of people think that Bird was too slow and couldn’t jump, and that he wouldn’t be able to play today.
People like JJ Redick, for one, who really should know better (Redick said that he didn’t think Bird was a top-five all-time three-point shooter).
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Redick was born in 1984, so he was too young to see Bird in his prime, and may not have watched him much in his later years either to understand why he was such a feared shooter. That’s hard to know. However, the idea that Bird would struggle in today’s game is ludicrous, and this video partially demonstrates why.
You’ll see several things repeated here. For one, Bird on several occasions is on the floor and nonetheless still delivers pinpoint, lethal passes.
You’ll also see him make several passes to players behind him that he cannot possibly see. Nonetheless, he knows where they will be and delivers perfect passes for easy baskets, sometimes with 2-3 defenders in the way.
You’ll also see plays where he just touches the ball long enough to direct it to a teammate. It’s not exactly a pass; it’s more like a redirection.
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As the narrator notes, Bird has superb situational awareness, and perhaps the best hand-eye coordination in the history of the game. But he also played as hard as anyone, and with an amazing amount of self-confidence.
This is a guy who said that he knew, on his third day of practice as a rookie, that he would dominate the NBA.
There are Larry Bird trash talking videos out there on the YouTubes, where he told his defenders exactly what he was going to do, and then did it.
And then there’s this: Bird played in an era when guys sometimes tackled each other in the open court and pulled each other down like they were in WrestleMania, not the NBA.
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In this era, where you can’t defend physically as you could in the 1980’s, no one could have stopped Bird. He might have averaged 40 points in the modern NBA.
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