Big Larry Bird and Jordan fan here
Too bad this current group of talent will not reach a broad audience.
They are playing in a racist, bigoted, woke, league that the majority will not watch
He was far too brutally honest for that.
I stopped watching basketball as a sport around 1990 or so, but I watched a lot of it in the late 70's on. I have watched some videos about Larry Bird, and I remember the sentiment of a lot of them (and one actually said it) was that "Bird was the baddest man on the court" in those days.
I can't remember who it was who said that. There are a lot of them, many related in this video: Larry Bird would fight, talk trash, tell you where he would make his shot, and win against you
Isaiah Thomas once said "If you put all of us in a room, Magic, Jordan, myself, and Bird, Bird would probably be the guy who walked out of the room at the end of the day..."
Xavier McDaniel related this one:
Bird said to me, I'm gonna get the ball...I said 'I know, I'm gonna be waitin'...he said, 'I'm gonna get it right here, I'm gonna shoot it right in your face'...he came out right there at that exact spot and shot it right in my face with two seconds left. He said 'I told you I was gonna do it. I didn't mean to leave two seconds on the clock. I meant to shoot it with zero seconds on the clock.'
I liked this anecdote:
"...Imagine being the player that was 40-pieced by Larry Bird. That may seem common, but now imagine being the player that was 40-pieced by Larry Bird who was playing left-handed. That’s right, Bird did that once, as Bill Walton once recalled:
"...At the end of one of the trips, he had accomplished every goal. We hadn’t lost a game on the trip and Larry told all of us players and the media too — we were all standing around waiting to leave — he said, “Tomorrow night’s the last game of the trip, I’m going to play this one left-handed, at least through three quarters”.
Jerome Kersey faced the brunt of this stone-cold confidence in the Celtics’ next game vs. the Trail Blazers. The Valentine’s Day matchup saw Larry Legend put up a 47-point triple-double, and he dropped 20 of those with his left hand.
After the game, when asked by a reporter why he used his left hand to score, he famously said: “I’m saving my right hand for the Lakers.”
I don't care for trash talk in sports, never have, but...damn. Not only was Bird one of the giants of that heinous art, he backed it up, and was memorable, cutting, and hilarious in his quotes!