There’s an endless argument online about whether or not Larry Bird could play today. The answer to that is pretty easy: he’d be far better today than he was in the 1980’s. Why?
Because defense is more restricted today than it was in the 1980’s. When you look back at what guys like Bill Laimbeer did, or even Dennis Rodman or Kurt Rambis, much less Charles Barkley and Patrick Ewing. Those guys beat you half to death.
Today they’d foul out in the first quarter. Laimbeer, for one, would have a very hard
time sticking in the league today.
But that’s not the only reason Bird would be better today. He would benefit from a lot of things like better nutrition and training and so forth. And then his advantages would really come into focus, not least of all his astonishing basketball intelligence.
Michael Jordan told a story from his rookie year where Bird told him exactly what he was going to do and that the ball would bounce twice on the rim and then drop.
He did things like that all the time and with guys hanging all over him and giving as good as they got (Bird hit back too).
But he did things that no one has ever done before or since, like the play that Red Auerbach said was the greatest play he had ever seen.
In the 1981 Finals against Houston, Bird took a shot near the circle, just inside the three point line, that he immediately knew that he missed.
This is a level of athletic genius that no one else has ever achieved in basketball. And when you see someone’s intelligence, desire and will to win come into focus like this, it’s pretty clear that that guy could play basketball in any era.
