Section B · Page 8
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, May 3, 2000
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Bird exemplifies a player's coach
Calm, relaxed he sets the pace for his players
The Associated Press
INDIANAPOLIS — Swish after swish, the net snapping like a whip, Larry Bird sinks five shots in a row from different spots on the three-point arc, wiping out rookie Jonathan Bender in a game of H-O-R-S-E.
Again.
"I kill him all the time," Bird said with a grin as he walked off the court.
Some coaches might scream at their players after a listless loss in a playoff game. But Bird calmly takes his men through a couple of hours of easy drills and a shootaround that ends with him sinking a few more shots for good luck.
In his last days on a job he never intended to keep past this season. Bird still is the ultimate player's coach, one of the guays.
He's sensitive to what gets under the skin of players when they've been embarrassed, as his Indiana Pacers were at home in Game 2 and on the road in Game 4 of their first-round playoff series
against the Milwaukee Bucks. Although he believes he's not a good coach, he knows not to push them too much.
Here he is close to the end of his three-year tenure on the sidelines, unsure of what he will do next, and he looks neither edgy nor resigned. The situation is tight, but he wants his players to stay loose. He just hopes they will respond with the same intensity he demanded of himself when he wore a Celtics uniform.
And they did respond with intensity in Game 3, beating the Bucks 109-96 Saturday night in Milwaukee and taking a 2-1 lead in the best-of-five series despite the absence of suspended center Rik Smits.
Then Monday night in Milwaukee, the Pacers once again lost to the hotshooting Bucks, 100-87, which tied the series 2-2 and sent it back to Indianapolis on Thursday.
Bird didn't rant on the bench or in the locker room this time, either, as his team stood one loss from elimination and he moved one game closer to retirement. Hands clasped like a schoolboy, his expression as stoic as ever, Bird knew his players would respond to wounded pride more than any exhortation he could deliver.
Bird never asked his players to shoot like him, to have his touch or vision, to score and rebound and pass like him, or to come up with the
"If you get the guys to play hard for you, that'll win you a lot of games in this league."
Larry Bird
Pacers coach
big plays night after night the way he did in leading the Celtics to three NBA titles. All he ever expected of them was to play like professionals, with the kind of passion he felt the game deserved.
So he looked puzzled and offended, rather than openly angry, when asked why a veteran team should be lackadaisical in the playoffs.
"I never could understand that," he said.
It was a rare lapse of intensity in the Bird era of the Pacers. In his quiet, dignified way, Bird brought the best out of his players by giving them a balance of guidance, freedom and respect that they appreciated.
Bird, 43, will walk away from coaching with no regrets, despite the fact he may fail to achieve his goal: a bert in the NBA finals and a shot at the title.
"You don't want to let Larry down," Pacers guard Jalen Rose said.
"I enjoy coaching, and it's been
very interesting, but I'm not very good at it. I don't like to do things that I'm not very good at." Bird said without a hint of false modesty.
"I'd liked to have won one once here. But even more than winning a championship, if I thought I was a good coach maybe I would have wanted to stay."
Not very good at it?
What about that NBA Coach of the Year award he won in his rookie season, when he led the Pacers to Game 7 of the Eastern Conference finals a year after they failed to make the playoffs under Larry Brown?
What about reaching the Eastern Conference finals again last year?
What about a 147-67 record for the best three-year winning percentage in team history?
"Well, I got a lot of good help, and I had a good team," Bird said. "They play hard for me. If you get the guys to play hard for you, that'll win you a lot of games in this league. But I'm not a great coach. I found that out last year, and that's why I said it's one more year.
Bird's highlight as coach, curiously, was not a victory but a loss. One very grudging 88-83 loss to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in Game 7 of the 1998 Eastern Conference finals.
"I thought we really battled," Bird said. "We finally felt that we belonged.
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