The Best the Game Offers

By Tom Callahan

Not just in the playoffs, Larry Bird and Dr. J love to play

By the time pro basketball's interminable dance marathon turns into ballet, so few people are left watching. It is a pity. The game simply cannot be played all-out or very well for 100 nights over six months, so the National Basketball Association is at its best only near the end of the season, when everyone cares almost half as much as Larry Bird and Julius Erving do all of the time.

The Boston Celtics and Bird and the Philadelphia 76ers and Dr. J are flying in each other's faces in the playoffs again, and that is the best sport this game offers. "Best" is an easily said word, but then basketball is a simply played game. To Oscar Robertson, it was always as elementary as subtraction: give Oscar an 18-footer and he wanted a 15-footer; give him a 15-footer and he wanted a twelve-footer. Many basketball people have long considered Robertson the best ever, but one has lately reconsidered.

With a sigh that warns this is going to sound crazy, the celebrated Celtic backcourtman Bob Cousy declares: "In five years everyone will say it. But I'm ready to say it now. Larry Bird is the best player who ever played this foolish game."

The best player is an uncomplicated farm hand, a real "Hick from French Lick [Ind.]." (Jerry West probably never really was--and certainly never wanted to be--"Zeke from Cabin Creek [W. Va.].") When asked the condition of a busted thumb or punctured cheekbone, Bird naturally replies: "Broke." Long, loose-limbed and 25, he shambles when he walks. His hair is as ruly as alfalfa and his complexion as adolescent as measles. From top to bottom, a distance measured to be 6 ft. 9 in., Bird could not be whiter if he were a professional blood donor. His yellow mustache suggests a gulp of buttermilk.

Bird may be countrified, but he is canny in the style of Will Stockdale in the play No Time for Sergeants. "I'm pretty smart on the court, if not so smart in real life," drawls Bird, hinting he is not too dumb anywhere. "He has an instinct," Cousy says, "a natural feeling for the sport, vision, long arms, unselfish attitude"--up to this point, Cousy could be describing himself--"and everything else you might want to order. He's the most innovative player." His specialty: one-time-only passes for one-time-only plays. "Did you see that off-the-shoulder job? What's the cliche--necessity is the mother of invention?" Cousy is often called the best passer ever, and he thinks Bird is better.

"Bird is not a great leaper, just has a sense of when to go up for a rebound. He doesn't have the explosive speed of Dr. J, for instance, just the required speed. Bird simply has no weaknesses. After only three seasons, you're inclined to say: 'Let a little history go by before saying anyone is the best.' But I just don't think there has ever been such a complete player."

Because of the nature of basketball, centers, however incomplete, are more important than forwards. Bird could be the best player in the N.B.A. at the same time that Robert Parish, Boston's 7-ft. pivotman, is the most valuable one on the team, and that is probably the situation right now. Still, Bird's impact approximates a center's. It used to be said of Bill Russell, "He improves every player on the floor." Now it is said of Bird.

And it should be said also of Erving, at 32 the other sublime forward in the game. Dr. J concurs with Bird that the pass means more than the shot and only gives the impression that the "move" means most of all. Bird recalls Robertson's impeccability; Erving reprises Elgin Baylor's flamboyance. But the subtler moves of Dr. J are the ones the players note and appreciate.

After the second game of the Eastern Conference playoff, when the 76ers rebounded from a 40-point loss to the Celtics to square the series, Philadelphia Forward Bobby Jones was waiting for Erving at his locker. "Thanks, Doc," said Jones, who had been having a bad time, "for getting me off of it." On consecutive trips down the court, Erving had faked, dribbled and personally arranged easy shots for Jones just to get him going again.

Someone in the locker room was remarking on how essentially different Bird and Erving are and trying to figure out why, then, they seem alike. Seldom assigned to guard each other, except for an occasional meeting on the fly, they can't be measured one-on-one. "You know what it is?" said Jack McMahon, the 76ers' assistant coach, who played with Bob Pettit, coached Elvin Hayes and Oscar Robertson and knows something about great players. "Those two guys love to play, and it shows in both of them the same way. Not just in the playoffs but all year long. You can see it; the people can."

After eleven seasons, with American Basketball Association championships behind him and N.B.A. championships eluding him, Erving still plays for joy and radiates it. "You should see him at practice," McMahon said. "He always is ready to play a rookie one-on-one afterward. There is nobody like him for coming to play every night, except Bird. Bird is that way." If more were that way--not that good, just that way--the season might not seem so long. --By Tom Callahan

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