Larry doubled down on this trash talk by drilling yet another jumper over Dennis, returning to Chuck and pouring salt into the wound with the words:Ĭoach, you better get this guy out and send in somebody who’s going to D me up because it’s too easy when I’m wide open like this.
I would be all over him, trying to deny him the ball, and all Larry was doing was yelling at his teammates, ‘I’m open! Hurry up before they notice nobody is guarding me!’ Some credit should go to Rodman - hearing this fuelled the fire, and he began to defend Larry even harder, but the trash talk just wouldn’t stop. Who’s guarding me, Chuck? Is anyone guarding me? You better get someone on me or I’m gonna go for 60. Starting off early in his career as a Piston, Dennis was tasked with guarding the Celtic forward, and Bird took him to school, humiliating him with both his game and his words.īird dropped four straight buckets over Rodman, and being the embodiment of swagger he was, walked over to Detroit coach Chuck Daly and yelled: Not even Dennis Rodman, one of the greatest defenders of all-time, would get away without a taunt from Larry Legend. Nobody in the league was safe from Bird’s trash talk. “Hurry up before they notice nobody is guarding me!” “ I’m saving my right hand for the Lakers.” Why did he do it? To flex, of course, or as he savagely put it after the game: 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. Jerome Kersey faced the brunt of this stone-cold confidence in the Celtics’ next game vs. 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”. That’s right, Bird did that once, as Bill Walton once recalled:Īt the end of one of the trips, he had accomplished every goal. That may seem common, but now imagine being the player that was 40-pieced by Larry Bird who was playing left-handed. Imagine being the player that was 40-pieced by Larry Bird. “I’m going to play this one left-handed.” Two great trash-talkers that once bumped heads began to see eye-to-eye on the court. Ironically, Larry Bird, later on, became Pacers coach, handling none other than Reggie Miller. Larry Bird dropped those two free-throw shots, and the Celtics ended up beating the Pacers by 6. Reggie Miller on how trash-talking Larry Bird failed Rook, you gotta be kidding me.” … Bird got the ball again, and before he shot, he said, “Rook, I’m the best f - king shooter in the league right now, in the league, understand? And you’re up here tryna say something?” I tried to throw off his timing… I said out of the side of my mouth, “Hey, hey.” He stopped right before he shot, looked at me and said, “You gotta be kidding me. I was standing on the line and being a rookie dumbass, not realizing that this was one of the best free-throw shooters to ever play the game. We were down by three points, Bird went to the line to shoot two. We about 20 seconds left, and we fouled Bird. That said, the very few players that did often got a scathing comeback from Bird, who did not hold back, no matter who he was talking to. Very few players have had the balls to challenge Larry Bird.
“Rook, I am the best f - king shooter in this league.”
Of course, Larry Bird backed up this trash talk, and he defended his back-to-back three-point title once again, all while shooting in his warmup jersey. He reportedly looked around the locker room, surrounded by players including Mark Price and Danny Ainge, before coolly dropping the line: Having snagged two contest titles in a row, 1998’s contest saw a Larry Bird that was more confident than ever, and he let this confidence shine through with his trash talk.
The only other player to do this is Craig Hodges (we’ll come onto him later), a player who holds the joint record for the most number of times leading the league in 3P%. Of course, Bird’s three-point ability landed him in the three-point contest, which he won three years in a row. His career 3P% of 37.6% with over 1,700 shots taken doesn't even do his ability justice, since the stories and highlights all seem to hint that if he wanted to, he could have done even more on the court. After his trash talk, Larry Legend is probably most well-known for his laser accuracy from three-point range.
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