NBA Q&A: Larry Bird

Courtesy of Candace Buckner 

Q: Any advice that you can give our national team as to the competition they’ll face at Worlds?

Bird: It’s different. It’s like, I tell our young players, the first round is tough. Once you get to the second round it’s completely different. As you keep moving up, the competition is greater. That’s why it is so hard in this league for teams to beat the great teams night in and night out, because the competition level just continues to get better and better. As far as advice, you have to keep playing. Any time you’re in a competition and you move up, you’ve got to stay together. You’re going to have good days, your bad days, but overall, if you stay together and everyone is pulling in the same direction, it makes everything easier.

Q: You were part of one of the greatest, if not the greatest, basketball team of all time. Do you think you’ll ever see another generation with 11 All-Stars on just one team?

Bird: Well, they’ve tried to duplicate that over the years – you’re talking about the Dream Team, right? On the Dream Team, there were some very special players. Guys that were along in their careers, we had some younger guys coming in. Obviously, everybody thinks Jordan was the best player ever, so I was able to play with him and Magic Johnson. I don’t know, there’s a lot of talent. In ’92, we were the first as pros to play in the Olympics, which was a great honor, any time you represent your country. But going in, we knew that we were probably going to win. What we did, we stuck together, took care of business and moved on.

Q: You had your time with the Celtics – you had a dynasty with them. Looking back from then and what you have now, do you think your team has the right pieces, the right coach to win a championship?

Bird: It’s always tough to win the championship. What we’re trying to do is build a team that can compete on a nightly level. There’s great competition in our league. We have to continue to get better, we have a lot of young players. I don’t compare this team to the Celtics teams because it’s a completely different style we played. I do think they’re good enough, they’re deep enough to compete for a championship. As always, our goal is to get to the Finals and try to win the whole thing. Overall, this team is completely different than the teams I played on. They’re getting better. Obviously last year, they got to the Eastern Conference Finals and game seven against Miami. Until we make the next step, we’re not going to get there. I do like our chances, I like our team, and hopefully in a short period of time here we can challenge for a championship.

Q: Follow up, how do you think Erik Spoelstra has done so far?

Bird: He’s done a great job. He’s a very young coach who came in, even though he’s been a part of basketball for a long time. He had a lot of scrutiny going on, it’s a very tough job for him, but I thought he handled it as well as he possibly could. Things have changed. Obviously they’ve got a lot of talent down there, but sometimes the teams that have the most talent are the ones that are the most difficult to coach. I think he’s done a fantastic job.

Q: How much have Red Auerbach and K.C. Jones influenced your career as an executive?

Bird: I’ve been very fortunate. I had Donnie Walsh, who was with the Pacers for over 20 years. I had a guy named Dave Gavitt, who started the Big East, I was under him for a while. Then obviously, Red Auerbach, I’ve been around him for 15 years. You take a little bit from everybody, and learn as you go. The rules are completely different now than when Red was running the franchise. You do your best with what you have. I think all three of them were great guys to be under. K.C. Jones was the nicest man I ever met in my life, and I was fortunate to have him coach me for five or six years.

Q: You’ve been very fortunate with your past few draft picks. Can you give some insight on what you do to prepare for draft day?

Bird: I’ve made some mistakes too, let’s be real about it. Danny Granger was a guy we thought was going in the top-10 of the draft, and we picked him at 17. It was very fortunate that he slid to our pick. Roy Hibbert was taken 17^th in the draft, a lot of people passed him up. We got Roy on a draft night trade. Paul George was a top-10 pick. Lance Stephenson was like 42. Everybody looks at different things when they look at a player. I tend to look at length. Shooting, obviously. Can he defend first? Is he a team player? Does he do the things necessary to get better every year? Sometimes it’s hard, but you have to talk to their college coaches, AAU coaches and get as much information as you possibly can out of them. Then you try to put a team together that fits. Are they going to pass to one another? Are they going to play team defense? Do they pull for one another. There are a lot of things that go into it, but sometimes you just hope you get lucky. I got fortunate enough, me and my team got fortunate enough that turned out to be pretty good players.

Q: What do think the Pacers need to do to be champions this year?

Bird: We got to have, our bench has to be better. We have a good starting five, but our bench has to play better than last year. I know how hard it is to win these championships, it isn’t easy. We do have a group of good guys that play together and pull for one another. We just have to get a little lucky. We’re good enough. We’ve got to stay in there. We have a long season ahead of us. I really believe we’re built for the playoffs. When the playoffs come we’ve got to be ready, because there are going to be challenges facing us.

Q: The Eastern Conference will be very tough this year with the Chicago Bulls and Nets and Heat.

Bird: It’s not easy out there. Chicago got Derrick Rose back from surgery. Obviously the Brooklyn Nets, New York Knicks, they’re all good. Miami. It’s a challenge. We have to be lucky, stay healthy, and play together. Right now Miami is the best team. They have won two NBA Championships in a row and have been to the NBA Finals for three years in a row. Until someone beats them, they are the best team.

Q: If you could teach one thing to this generation about basketball, what would it be?

Bird: I think patience is a big thing. A lot of my guys work very hard in the offseason. The problem I have with the guys is if they are working on the right things. A lot of players today will go out and shoot 500 three-point shots. They cannot believe that when I practiced I did not shoot three-pointers. I always thought that the mid-range game was the most important part of the game because you want to always to get the ball closest to the rim to score a layup.  I always thought that the mid-range game was more important than three-point shooting. I tried to tell my guys not to work on three-pointers and to work on their mid-range game. If they can do that on a consistent basis, they will get better. I think a lot of players work on things that they do not need to work on. When a player like David (West) asks me a question, I try to help them from the way I did it. It may not work now because it has been over 20 years, but these guys will do whatever I ask them to do. They want to get better. I just hope they do the right things to improve their game as they go along.

Q: How do you feel about the Indiana Pacers playing in international games?

Bird: It is great anytime we get out of Indiana and get more recognition. Obviously the further you go in the playoffs, the more people watch you. This is great for us to be here. This is something that we wanted to do. We have a brand and want everyone, whether they like us as a team or not, to at least know who we are.

Q: How do you feel about the Indiana Pacers off-season player transactions?

Bird: I think we are set with the roster right now. Last year, after looking at the performance of the bench, the bench hurt us by not being able to score. This year we went out and we were fortunate to get C.J. (Watson), first.  He is a great backup point guard who has some great experience in the league. Then we obtained Chris Copeland from New York. We all know that Chris (Copeland) is a dead-eye shooter. He can score points in a hurry. Then we picked up Luis Scola. Everyone knows what Luis Scola brings to the table. He is older now but for what we need, he is perfect. These three moves are going to make us stronger. If we are going to compete at a higher level, the bench has to give us more than it did last year.

Q: Do you believe the Indiana Pacers are the deepest team in the conference?

Bird: I hope so, but you never know. It looks good on paper, but we will see what happens.

Q: Where do you feel the most pressure, being a player..?

Bird: Pressure? I don’t know what that is. Obviously you have never seen me play.

Q: Is the physical or mental part more difficult in basketball?

Bird: The physical part is just going out there and banging and hitting guys and being strong enough to be able to handle the punishment. These guys are big men and when they run into you, it hurts. With the mental aspect, everyone talks a good game but can they play a good game? We have a long schedule, and mental fatigue sets in just like coming here to the Philippines. We are on a 12-hour time difference right now. We can use that as an excuse or we can mentally prepare ourselves to win. I think that the mental aspect is as tough as anything because we play almost every night and we play a lot of back-to-back games. You cannot make an excuse. The teams that make excuses do not last long in the Playoffs. Everyone is going to have their injuries and everyone is going to get beat up and be sore. It will come down to who can overcome the mental and the physical aspect which will get you far in the Playoffs.

Q: How has the Dream Team impacted international basketball?

Bird: Back in 1992, the one thing that I was told before everyone on the Dream Team decided to get together to play in the Olympics was, you can change the game of basketball in the whole world if you do this. What they meant by that was, if we go somewhere and dominate, everyone in the world will say that they have to get better. They would have to bring better coaches, they would have to bring in better facilities, and they would need better training techniques. That is something that I have seen in the last 20 years. Everyone has gotten better. Not just the United States of America and China, but everyone in the world is getting better. It is because of what happened in 1992. If they did not get better, USA was going to dominate forever. In the last 15 years, every once in a while, we do get beat. We get beat because of what happened in 1992.