Every time I hear a new Larry Bird trash talking story, I get excited. I’ve always known he was a big trash talker. When I was a kid, I remember seeing NBA players being asked about this and I remember them always saying Bird was tops. Over the years, there was a slow trickle of stories confirming it. Last week, we got an awesome story from Dominique Wilkins about Bird’s propensity to run his mouth.
But today we got another one. And this one, my friends, does not disappoint. It comes from Jayson Williams, who is telling a story about being an All Star on the East squad coached by Larry Bird. But the story must begin with him being a rookie in Philly (we know how much Bird loved rookies) and chomping at the bit to get a crack at guarding Bird.
I’m going to skip past the parts where Charles Barkley, Armen Gilliam, and Rick Mahorn all fail at covering Bird just so I’m not ripping the whole piece off. I’m begging you to go read the whole excerpt under the “bleeping rookie” section of the piece. There’s a lot more there. I’m picking up the story at Williams getting his shot at Bird.
“After he destroys Rick Mahorn, he is trotting backward and he looks over at me and at the coach and says, ‘Hey, Coach, put in the f—ing rookie! And I say, ‘Yeah, Coach, put me in!’
An exasperated Jim Lynam finally points to the eager rookie to go in.
“I go right up to Bird, he pump fakes, and I jump, my feet are over his head,” an excited Williams recollects. “I come back down, and he says, ‘Take that, rookie.’ A 3-pointer. I was like, ‘oh s—.’
“We go down next play. I say I am not going to jump [on a ball fake]. Boom! [Bird] raises up, another 3-pointer. He says, ‘Hey, I am shaking you from too far out, huh? You’re a post player? Come take some of this.’
“He did a jump hook on me then did a reverse on me, and then he dunked on me and he had like 14 points,” Williams continues. “So I ran up to him and said, ‘You want to fight, you son of a bitch? You want to fight?’ He just looked at the ref and said, ‘Get this rookie away from me.'”
And according to Williams, that was just the first half. Williams said he had tasted enough of Bird.
Remember, this is all part of a story of him walking into the East locker room as a member of COACH Larry Bird’s East squad. Here’s the payoff:
“I say, ‘Hey, Coach, how are you doing?'” Williams recounts. “And he takes a long pause and goes, ‘Your minutes [plan for the game] are on the refrigerator.'”
After a long pause, Williams says the words Bird said that he will never forget.
“‘You f—ing rookie,'” Williams said Bird told him.
“I said, ‘Holy s—!’ He remembered!” Williams bellows while laughing. “It was like a Clint Eastwood movie the way he said it.”
Larry Bird. The baddest man alive.
(h/t Bob A.)
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