If Larry Bird were to play in the modern, 3-point-crazed NBA, how good would he be?
Editor’s note: Forty years ago, the NBA introduced the 3-point shot. This is the first of several articles that The Athletic will publish this week describing the ways in which the shot has affected different players and teams around the league.
The most remarkable shot is still the one that didn’t count 35 years later. As he told it, Larry Bird hit it while vanishing into the trainer’s lap. After being fouled, Bird made a shot that was so amazing that it left several Hawks players on the opposing bench in disbelief.
When Bird released the bucket following the whistle, one of the officials waved it off. Nevertheless, Bird scored 60 points that night, a career high, to cap off the performance. It also left a lasting impression—the kind that, even after all these years, still makes witnesses shake their heads. John Sterling, a renowned play-by-play guy for the Yankees, described the action that night as the best shooting show he had ever seen. Sterling was then calling the action as a basketball broadcaster working Hawks games.
Sterling remembers, “I’m broadcasting right next to the bench.” “And the Hawks players were cheering, laughing, yelling, and bouncing up and down. It was, after all, falling within my broadcast role. My bench was being hit by it. It was simply the most amazing shooting display.
Bird’s sixty points on that March 1985 day still stand as the franchise high for the Celtics. He executed it on a captivating variety of pictures. Twisting to his left, nearly behind the backboard, with a defender in his chest, he banged down one long jumper. Just inside the free-throw line, he hit a floater that seemed like it would brush the ceiling before descending gently through the net. Even though Dominique Wilkins had predicted exactly what he would do, he nailed a fadeaway over Wilkins.
That Celtics team’s guard Rick Carlisle says, “That was a magnificent display.” “Some of these shots could have been released into the universe in real time if we hadn’t had the internet, Instagram, or Twitter.” Otherwise, Larry Bird’s legend.
Bird also did not enjoy the luxury of playing during the 3-pointer era.
That day, against the Hawks, Bird only made one 3-pointer—a statistic that seems unthinkable in this day and age. Basketball has seen a great deal of change since Bird’s 1992 NBA retirement. The league has evolved into a realm where players are less skilled post-up players and more athletic. More offensive mobility has been made possible by rule modifications. More than ever, defenses depend on players’ ability to shift between positions. Of course, the 3-point arc, which was a side attraction during Bird’s time, has developed into the focal point of attention for a lot of players nowadays.
To be honest, nobody in his time completely understood the power of the arc, thus Bird never really capitalized on a skill that had the potential to be his superpower. His old colleagues are confident that he would have been a high-volume, high-accuracy shooter who could have destroyed defenses from inside the arc or well beyond it in the modern NBA.
Jerry Sichting, who played with the Celtics from 1985 to 1988 before going on to become a longstanding NBA assistant coach, describes him as “Dirk Nowitzki times two.”
Adds Carlisle, a 1984–1987 Celtic, For him, it would be a feeding frenzy. I can say that with certainty.
Adds Carlisle, a 1984–1987 Celtic, For him, it would be a feeding frenzy. I can say that with certainty.
In mid-December, Carlisle—who is currently the head coach of the Mavericks—is sitting in his office thinking back on some of Bird’s best shooting efforts throughout their three seasons together. The 60-point scoring spree against the Hawks was one instance. a flurry of fifty points in Dallas. And even though they weren’t teammates at the time, Carlisle recalls Bird sealing a dramatic comeback against the Mavericks with a transition 3-pointer.
Bird grabbed a pass from Danny Ainge, pulled up from several feet behind the arc, and hammered the game-winning jumper over the outstretched arms of a jumping defender after a free throw had placed the Celtics behind by two in the closing seconds. Carlisle thought it was much ahead of its time.
He claims that “that was kind of a sign of things to come in future decades.”
It was also a taste of what Bird may have consistently achieved had he competed in the modern era. Bird never embraced the line like players do now, despite having contributed to the beginning of the 3-point era. That is, until the 1980s.
The 3-point line was not even implemented by the NBA until Bird’s 1979–1980 rookie campaign. Bird had mastered the use of the arc seven years into his career, better than any other player at the time, but the impact was still little. In the regular season of 1985–86, he led the league with 82 3-pointers, a total that would have tied Bird for 130th in 2018–19.
