When the Game Was Ours - Larry Bird [148]
"Oh, and one more thing," Bird said. "I'm only coaching three years. No matter what happens. After three years, your players tune you out."
Some of his ideas were his own. Others he adopted from conversations with Portland assistant coach Rick Carlisle, who had given him a binder overflowing with coaching techniques before the interview.
After Bird landed the job, he lured Carlisle and fellow Portland assistant coach Dick Harter to Indianapolis. In their first meeting, Bird told them, "I'm going to pump these guys up and give them so much confidence that by my third year here we'll make the Finals."
He gave Harter the responsibility of running the defense and put Carlisle in charge of the offense, including diagramming the plays in the huddle. It was a highly unusual move to give so much responsibility to an assistant, but Bird didn't care. He was learning. Carlisle was better than he was at drawing up the plays.
Bird's expectations were straightforward: be in shape, be respectful, be on time. He enforced all three. In his first year, the Pacers were taking a charter flight to Nashville, Tennessee, for an exhibition game against the Charlotte Hornets. At precisely 4:00 P.M., Bird signaled for the pilot to start the engine and take off. At 4:03, Dale Davis and Travis Best ran out onto the tarmac, bags in hand. The pilot cut the engine. Bird signaled for him to rev it up again. The door remained closed and the plane took off, leaving two of the team's key players standing on the runway in disbelief.
Bird was enthused about the team's nucleus: Reggie Miller, his scorer and his leader; center Rik Smits; veteran point guard Mark Jackson; and redoubtable forwards Dale Davis and Antonio Davis (no relation). His bench included Best and the versatile Jalen Rose, and when he acquired former Dream Team teammate Chris Mullin, Bird felt that he had the ammunition to make a run at Jordan and his Bulls.
Indiana catapulted from 39 to 58 wins, the biggest turnaround in franchise history. Bird was voted NBA Coach of the Year, and the team advanced to the Eastern Conference Finals, where they lost to the Bulls in seven games.
The Pacers limped home knowing they had been one play away from shocking Jordan's team. Midway through the fourth quarter of Game 7, Indiana was up by three points when a jump ball was called between Jordan and the seven-foot Smits.
As the players gathered around the circle, Bird noticed Scottie Pippen and Reggie Miller jockeying for position. He didn't like how Pippen was a shade in front of Miller.
"Reggie could get beat on that," he thought to himself.
Indiana's alignment was set up perfectly for Smits to tip behind his head—except that, as Bird realized in a moment of horror, his center never tipped that way.
The coach turned to his assistants to make sure he had a timeout. In that moment of hesitation, the ball was tossed. Bird hollered for time, but it was too late. Pippen stepped in front of Miller to intercept the tip, and the Bulls turned the possession into a Steve Kerr three-pointer. Indiana went on to lose the game and the series.
For the next three months, Bird brooded over his rookie mistake. He knew from his own playing days that chances at the Finals were fleeting, and it gnawed at him that he had cost his veterans a chance to get there.
The following season Smits battled foot troubles, and some of the older players began grumbling about their reduced roles. Again the Pacers made it to the Eastern Conference Finals, and again they were denied a trip to the Finals, this time by Patrick Ewing of "Harry and Larry" fame.
The Pacers juggled their personnel during the off-season, trading Antonio Davis for high school phenom Jonathan Bender and placing Jalen Rose in the starting lineup. He responded by leading the team in scoring. Bird perused the NBA rosters, searching for a