The time Larry Bird hustled Shank out of $160

We’ve all heard about the time Larry Bird injured his hand throwing a punch during a bar fight back in 1985. Dan Shaughnessy expounds on that story with a tale involving himself and Larry Legend shortly after that incident:

SHAUGHNESSY: He had his hand taped like a fist, like a boxing glove almost, and he was just shoving the ball off that hand like a shot put. And he made 6 out of 10, first round. I made 6 out of 10, so we’re even. And then the second round, I was rebounding for him and he said ‘Oh, I’ve got this figured out.’ And he did. He made an adjustment, and he knew. And he made like 8 or 9 out of 10. And of course I step up and I’m starting to see $5 bills fly through the air every time I let go, and I was choking, and he beat me by $160. I think it was 88-62 or whatever it was, but I owed him $160. So I went to the ATM, got him his eight 20s, and the next night they were playing the 76ers and I was there early plugging in by courtside and he was doing his late-afternoon thing by himself in the Garden with [equipment manager Joe Qatato] rebounding for him, and he came over and put his hand out, and I gave him the eight 20s.

HIMMELSBACH: So he accepted the money? It wasn’t just like, ‘Keep the money, you poor sportswriter’?

SHAUGHNESSY: He totally took the money, stuck it in his sneaker. And, gross, he played with my eight $20 bills in his shoe the whole night and lit up the 76ers. And then I saw him like two days later after practice and he says, ‘Yeah, Dinah,” — that’s his wife – he says, “We had a big dinner on you last night and she said to give that writer the rest of his money back. Can you imagine what a sap she is?’ So that’s how that played out.

Legend was notoriously cheap so it’s no surprise he took Shank’s money and bought his wife dinner with the cash.

I can’t get enough of vintage Bird tales. While googling photos for this blog post, I came across this doozy: