“I Am Gonna Torch Your A** Today,” Larry Bird’s Absurd Insult To Ed Pinckney Prior To Practice

“I Am Gonna Torch Your A** Today,” Larry Bird’s Absurd Insult To Ed Pinckney Prior To Practice.

If you’re not at least a bit insane, it’s impossible to become one of the greatest of all time. Michael Jordan is the ideal illustration of this; there are fabled tales of him being so driven that he developed rivalries with everyone in his vicinity. To some degree, all the greats—including Larry Bird—are like this.

With his trademark trash talk, Larry Bird once completely crushed Gary Payton. But Larry Legend would go off on his teammates just as Michael Jordan would. A former teammate of Bird’s described during a panel session how he used to trash talk Ed Pinckney before practice.

My favorite Larry Bird tale is this one. Ed Pinckney plays for fifteen minutes every game. When we arrived at Hellenic College, nobody was in the mood to practice. And there would be Eddy Pinckncey sitting there, getting dressed in his shoes. And Larry would enter, his grey sweatpants on, his bag slung over his shoulder. And he would say, “Ed Pinckney,” while standing over Ed Pinckney. Ed Pinckney. Today, I’m going to burn your ass.

This narrative sounds just like something Larry Bird would say to inspire everyone; following an incident involving an airport, he did once trash the Brooklyn Nets. And although some could find fault with Bird’s attitude to Pinckney, the man understood what it was all about.

Ed Pinckney shared his version of the story about Larry Bird berating him.
When Larry Bird talked garbage to Ed Pinckney, he was aiming to ignite a rivalry within the Boston Celtics club, and Pinckney acknowledged as much when narrating the same event.

“As a competitor, you take pride in your abilities as a single player when you go up against the best. “You won’t simply walk into practice and collapse,” Pinckney informed broadcaster Jason Fraser. And this guy used to say, ‘Pinck, sorry,’ when he would show up to practice every day. Today, I have to kick your ass.