Larry Bird: Not ‘many 7-footers walking around at the age of 75’
The NBA, relative to its counterparts in pro baseball and football, is a young league. This is why the ‘In Memoriam’ reel that NBA TV played in its 2015 year-end wrap-up show was so heartbreaking.
The league, which typically can reliably call up any number of retired legends to judge a Slam Dunk Contest or swap stories in league-run documentaries, lost far too many from its ranks last year.
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In the wake of the passing of several big men came the good news of the encouraged free medical screenings, funded by the Players Association.
More saddening, however, are the comments from NBA legend Larry Bird in a recent and typically-brilliant Jackie MacMullan feature:
“I tell my wife all the time, ‘You don’t see many 7-footers walking around at the age of 75,'” says Bird, who’s 6-foot-9. “She hates it when I say that. I know there are a few of us who live a long time, but most of us big guys don’t seem to last too long. I’m not lying awake at night thinking about it. If it goes, it goes.”
(Don’t go. Seriously, don’t go.)
The feature goes on to describe an incident during a game during Bird’s first year as Indiana Pacers’ head coach, three years removed from him being diagnosed with an enlarged heart:
“ […] on March 17, 1998, the 41-year-old coach of the Eastern Conference-contending Pacers, in the thick of a hotly contested game with the defending champion Bulls, could hardly recline and sleep it off. “Oh god,” Bird thought as he tried to steady himself on the Indiana sideline. “Please don’t let me pass out on the court.”
(I was at that game. Apologies for making this about me, but the realization that I could have watched Larry Bird suffer a heart attack just a few feet away from where this dumb 17-year old was complaining about moving screens is a bit tough to process, right now.)
Bird’s former teammate Bill Walton, according to MacMullan, estimates he’s had 37 surgeries in his lifetime – including an 8 1/2 hour spinal fusion operation in 2008. The pall of endless recovery after recovery led him into a deep depression and admitted thoughts about suicide:
“I worry about all the guys,” Walton says. “I see Kevin dragging his foot around because he won’t have the ankle fusion surgery he needs. I talk to Larry about his health. But the greater the athletes are, the prouder and more stubborn they are.”
That might be true, but it wasn’t the case for many less-celebrated pro athletes that have passed away much too early, names we shouldn’t mention out of respect.
Men, sadly, often remain fatalistic to the point of ignoring life-threatening health symptoms. I’m not averse to thinking along those lines, and if you’re reading a basketball website on a Thursday afternoon it’s likely that you aren’t either.
MacMullan quotes former Detroit center and longtime player rep Bob Lanier as citing that Walton encourages him to take bike rides, because of the low impact nature of the exercise. All this does is remind of what Lanier had to go through during his time as a center in the 1970s. Without preferring one era to another, remember what the Dobber’s go-to anecdote was throughout his playing career – his league-leading shoe size.
His feet were usually shoved into low-cut Keds or Chuck Taylors as he dragged Walton and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar up and down the court for 14 seasons. With no team-led thought to minutes restrictions or overuse. It’s true that big men in the modern era have to do more – witness how we talk about Hassan Whiteside or DeAndre Jordan’s defensive merits, as they attempt to check shooters on the perimeter prior to defending the rim and grabbing the rebound and oh hey also could make a 20-footer? – but it almost seems miraculous that more big men from a prior age didn’t see their feet fall apart as Walton’s did.
Bill Walton, however, remains the ideal. Not only has he found a way to motivate himself through the recovery that stems from 37 operations, he’s successfully dealing with depression and is acting as an avatar for his former colleagues and even teammates to learn from.
Hopefully, he’ll act in the same leadership role for decades to come. Bill Walton isn’t alone in not wanting to be classified as a 7-footer, you’ll recall Kevin Garnett’s aversion to the label, but both he and Larry Bird are correct in pointing out that the rules are different up there.
The good news is that the NBA and its players union are acting aggressively in this realm. One that, we hope, limits the length and tear-inducing scope of any future ‘In Memoriam’ segments.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
