The fire and the quiet

Sporting News, The, Nov 3, 1997 by Bill Minutaglio, Dave D'Alessandro

Jones would shake his head. Just like Auerbach, thinking about how Bird is somewhere lost among those damn palm trees and coconuts in Florida. "It's a shame with all that talent," Auerbach says.

Meanwhile, Bird doesn't say it. Won't tell anyone, even when he is locked into some serious tee time with Michael Jordan or playing the court jester with Magic Johnson at some hokey promotional event.

But, sometimes, maybe when he is sitting in his chair at home in Florida and watching the satellite feed from some lame college game, trying to concentrate on the beer sweating in his hand and not the fire licking its raspy tongue from his back to his brain, he also is thinking about The Zone.

Michael and Magic and me. That was the best, that was the best.

The more he thinks, the more he wants back in.

Finally, he calls Walsh at 2:30 p.m. on the second Thursday in May: "We've got to start moving," Bird says. The announcement goes out the same day.

Michael Jordan learns with the rest of the world. Bird never gave him a clue when they were cutting each other on the links. But Jordan wonders how long it will all last. How long before Larry Bird realizes no coach can find The Zone, before all the quiet is erased by some sort of screaming mutiny or tale of jurisprudence: "I assume," says Jordan during a training-camp break, "he'll have to deal with the egos and personalities of the modern-type player."

Dave Cowens, Bird's link to the Celtics and coach of the Hornets, says: "Most of us have served an internship somewhere ... he's never really coached."

And the Hawks' Lenny Wilkens, who has patiently endured, puts it gingerly: "As a player, he could personally affect what was happening on the floor. Now he's dependent. That will be frustrating."

Quinn Buckner, whose tenure as coach of the Mavericks was an instant, bloody fiasco, also says he personally knows how quickly everything can turn: "He understands hot buttons, how to press them. The question is when to press them. It's the art of being a coach. He'll have to understand that the ball is not in his hands anymore ... it might not even be in his court."

Things change, some people have the ability to adapt.

These days, K.C. Jones is coaching the New England Blizzard in the women's American Basketball League. His players call him God. He knows it is impossible to find the perfect silence, The Zone, as a coach. "He'll be in a honeymoon situation for a year," Jones says. "All the writers will be happy to get their quotes from Mr. Great."

But Bird, who promised he would drive his man hard ... who promised Xavier McDaniel ... has a new set of promises--to win, to not just pass through the coaching ranks on his way to an NBA kingdom.

"The thing about Larry Bird is that he keeps a promise," Jones says. "That's what he did better than anybody."

Reggie Miller gets these killer headaches.

The ones that are like a jailer's jack-boots thudding down the hall. The pounding, board-stiff kind, the kind that make you dizzy and feel like your pores are oozing blood and not sweat.