Under normal circumstances, Larry Bird would have been chilling at home, attending to his bad back in the summer of 1992. Instead, he positively answered a historic invitation and flew to Barcelona, a city over 5,000 miles away. Little did Larry Legend know he would make dreams come true along the way.
According to the Boston Celtics legend, something strange happened in the Tournament of the Americas, which is the equivalent of the FIBA Americas Championship today. Back in ‘92, Team USA had to fight for one of four slots in the tourney to qualify for the Barcelona Olympics.
It was the first time professional basketball athletes were allowed to play in the Olympics. With the U.S. tapping the services of everybody on the Dream Team, the competition was all but a formality. The coaching staff did not see the need for Bird to aggravate his messed-up back, so the three-time NBA champion just watched most of the games from the bench.
An unusual request
Fans often shout and implore coaches to send their favorite players in, but this time around, it wasn’t a paying patron with a strange request.
“In one of those games, I was in my usual spot on the floor when this Latin American official ran by our bench,” the NBA three-time MVP recalled in his book Bird Watching . “I hadn’t played all game, and as he ran by, he said, ‘Mr. Bird, Mr. Bird, please, you must come into the game.’ I was looking at him, wondering what he was talking about. He said, ‘I must be able to tell my family that I refereed a game in which the great Larry Bird was playing.'”
Luckily for the ref, the two MJs, Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, heard the whole thing. The two pulled off Larry’s warmups and implored Chuck Daly to send him in. And just like that, Bird made someone’s dream come true.
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Bird’s clipped wings
Larry had already hung up his sneakers in 1992 before duty called. He still came off a season averaging 20/10/7 but only played 45 games because of a bad back. The truth was that Bird was in pain practically the whole tournament, not only because of his condition but because he chose to forego steroid injections in fear of testing negative in the doping tests.
Ultimately, Larry Legend spent most of his time lying on his stomach while his teammates did the heavy lifting. He averaged 18 minutes in eight Olympic games and was good for 8.4 points, 3.8 rebounds, 1.8 assists, and 1.8 steals an outing. That said, seeing one of the greatest basketball players ever risking his health for a historic tournament is something to behold.
Like that referee in the Tournament of the Americas, that’s a story worth telling to your kids and grandkids.
Related: "There is only one man that can guard me, and that's God" - Robert Parish shares epic Larry Bird trash-talking story
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