| Of Steve Lipofsky's many excellent photographs of Larry Bird, there is one, a portrait taken early in his career before Bird came to understand that he didn't have to stand around for photographers, that is my favorite. There's Bird, in blue jeans and boots and a green satin Celtics jacket, ball tucked under his arm and a thumb jammed in his pocket. This photogarph so captures the essence of the young Larry that while looking at it you can almost hear the riffs of John Mellencamp's "I was born in a small town..." |
| It's pure Indiana gothic. |
| For nearly two decades now, Bird has been the proudest product of what is perhaps hoops' most intense subculture, Hoosier high school basketball. Yes, there have been the Rick Mounts, the Steve Alfords, the Damon Baileys, a select number of legendary hopefuls. There has even been the elite class, comprised of Oscar Robertson's and John Wooden's rare greatness. |
| Bird, though, resides alone at the top of the great hoops pyramid in Indiana, where basketball is worshipped with cultlike intensity. |
| And now Larry Bird has returned there. To coach the Indiana Pacers out of their doldrums. As a player, Bird never really inhabited the doldrums. If he wasn't injured, he was competing, burning actually, for the National Basketball Association title. |
| Somebody once asked him about a championship ring. |
| "I live for them things," Bird said. |
| As a coach, can he remanufacture that intensity he had as a player? That was the question that rolled across the minds of Indiana basketball fans in the late spring and early summer of 1997 as it became apparent that Bird would indeed take the job running the Pacers. |
| The Hick from French Lick. |
| To those who knew Larry, those who had been his teammates, the answer was simple: If success depended on hard work and preparation, then Larry would master it. As a player, Larry had always been defined by unparalleled effort. |
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