Dan Shaughnessy - Wish It Lasted Forever: Life with the Larry Bird Celtics

Wish It Lasted Forever

Life with the Larry Bird Celtics

Dan Shaughnessy

STAN GROSSFELD, BOSTON GLOBE

DAN SHAUGHNESSY has covered sports for the Boston Globe since 1981 and has been a sports columnist for the Globe since 1989. He has previously authored twelve books, including At Fenway, The Curse of the Bambino, and, with Terry Francona, the bestselling Francona: The Red Sox Years. He has been selected as Massachusetts Sportswriter of the Year fourteen times. He and his family live just outside Boston.

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For Dan Shaughnessy the Larry Bird Celtics of the mid-1980s stand apart. Yes, they were distinctively great. Yes, they were a very colorful group. An abundant source of material. But for the scribe, this was the key: He, and they, were essentially contemporaries. He hung with them, lost cash in free throw shooting contests with them, and experienced it all with the exuberance and fresh perspective of youth. This is the story of a great team, rendered in an immersive style. Its also a writers coming-of-age story. Looking back on that team and time, it was Bill Walton who said, I wish it lasted forever. He was speaking for the scribe as well.

Bob Costas, twenty-eight-time Emmy Awardwinning sportscaster

Peels back the curtain on the pulsating Celtics teams of the 1980s with insight, candor, and a brashness that earned Shaughnessy the nickname Scoop. A revealing account of his own trials and tribulations among one of the most celebrated collections of basketball stars ever assembled.

Jackie MacMullan, coauthor, with Larry Bird and Earvin Magic Johnson, of When the Game Was Ours

Dan Shaughnessy has long been an insider and has great knowledge of the game, which is on display in this look back at teams I played on. He has irritated the hell out of me, but has entertained me at the same time.

Cedric Maxwell, Boston Celtics, 197785, MVP of the 1981 NBA Finals

A fantastic read In its combination of off-court camaraderie and on-court intensity, Shaughnessys epic ode to the Bird-McHale-Parish Celtics evokes both Cheers and Hoosiers. Wish It Lasted Forever is about the obvioushistoric rivalries, legendary athletes, and a remarkable string of championship seasonsbut its also about an element of life as important as wins and losses: forever friendships formed by a group of guys playing a game.

Mike Barnicle, senior contributor to Morning Joe and former columnist for the New York Daily News, Boston Herald, and Boston Globe

Another book on Larry Bird? Yes, and its delicious. Of course, its not just Birdthe whole gangs here. Shaughnessy takes us back to a time when writers hung around with athletes: same flights, same hotels, same trips to the gamethey were the ultimate boys on the bus. For Celtics fans, this book is Springsteens Glory Daysoh, hes in here, too.

Lesley Visser, Hall of Fame sportscaster

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Copyright 2021 by Dan Shaughnessy

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First Scribner hardcover edition November 2021

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN 978-1-9821-6997-8

ISBN 978-1-9821-6999-2 (ebook)

For Danny, Nico, Matty, Jack, and Lucy, who were playing and sleeping in our cozy COVID bubble while Papa was upstairs writing most of this one.

When youre part of something that special, it changes you. You spend the rest of your life trying to get that back. When youre doing it, it seems like its going to last forever. When it ends, you realize how fragile, how tenuous, and how fleeting it all is.

Bill Walton, Boston Celtic, 198587

T hey are men in their sixties now, and all these years later there is still lively interaction, busting of chops, hugs of celebration, and sometimes sorrow. When you go through what these guys went through, winning the way they won, and laughing the way they laughed, green thread runs deep and connections dont fade.

Periodically, Indiana Pacers administrative assistant Susy Fischer will take a call for consultant Larry Bird, ask, Whos calling please?, then hear the person on the other end say, Tell him its the best player who ever played for the Celtics.

This means that M. L. Carr is on the line. Birds assistant is in on the joke.

Hi, M.L., Fischer will say. Let me see if Larry is in.

Carr is the player who supplied protection when Bird was a rookie in the NBA. Anybody who wanted to get tough with Bird had to deal with M.L. A federal prison guard before he was a Celtic, Carr likes to say, You cant rattle me. I was in the big house. I told Maurice Lucas and all those other enforcers that theyd have to go through me first. Those guys and those little NBA arenas were nothing compared with what Id already dealt with.

In a serious moment of reflection, Medicare-eligible Bird admits, M.L. was my best teammate. He always had my back.

M. L. Carr was Froggya nickname bestowed by Cedric Maxwell after he observed the way Carrs legs bowed before he went up for a shot or rebound. Fans didnt know about Froggy. It was an insider thingthe same with every team ever assembled. At every level, whether high school, college, or the pros, team members and those around them speak a locker room shorthand that they alone understand. Forty years later, hearing an old nickname or signature phrase is enough to transport a teammate back in time, the same way the smell of cinnamon toast puts you back in your moms cramped kitchen when you were five years old.

In 2021, if M. L. Carr walks through a crowded arena and hears Froggy, he knows that one of his former teammates is nearby. The only guys who call him Froggy are Bird, Maxwell, Kevin McHale, Danny Ainge, and other Celtics from the early 1980s.