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Cedric Maxwell: "I say the best player I ever played with wasn't Larry. But I played my last year, I played with Hakeem Olajuwon. I think Hakeem Olajuwon was maybe the greatest player of all-time that nobody talks about, because he dominated the floor better than anybody on both ends as ever. Larry was so cold-blooded, man. He would always talk to guys and say, 'Is your coach mad at you?' I'm like, 'Why?' He said, 'Because you have to guard me.' He would tell the coach, 'You must be kidding me.' If you put this white guy on me, I'm embarrassed that you put a white guy to guard me. Larry just had some stuff about him that was a little unusual, a little hickish, but man, what a great player he was."
While James won’t directly make the case that he’s the most influential athlete of the past half-century, on the barroom debate about the basketball GOAT, he doesn’t hesitate. “I’m not taking nobody over me,” says James. “There’s no question. But I think Mike will say the same thing. Rest his soul, Kobe will say the same thing. Magic will say the same thing. Bird will say the same thing. Shaq could say the same thing. The late great Wilt. Kareem. I don’t think none of us are going to take somebody else. If there’s a general manager and he’s eyeballing all of us on a baseline, with the No. 1 pick, it’s gonna be hard not to take me, champ.”
Hall of Famer and former Celtics star Kevin McHale, for one, bristles whenever he hears a current player question whether Larry Bird would be a superstar in 2026. “These are the same dudes that can’t guard [Lakers star] Luka Doncic, and Luka Doncic is lighting them up,” McHale said with a sigh during a recent phone call. “And I’m thinking, ‘Larry is bigger, stronger, faster, and meaner than Luka Doncic. And if Luka is lighting these dudes up, it’d be a five-alarm fire what Larry would do.’ ”
Bird was a 12-time All-Star, three-time MVP, and three-time NBA champion with the Celtics from 1979-92, even while dealing with injuries throughout his career. McHale said that with sports science advances, Bird would have the tools and support to dominate today’s game, too. “I just laugh at these people today,” he said. “Larry would go by you a hell of a lot faster than Luka would go by you. He was a straight-line driver, and he was also just a horse.”
Back in the early 1980s, when the NBA was still trying to regain its footing after falling out of favor with large swaths of the American sporting public during the ’70s, the league didn’t have much on which to hang its hat. Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were just at the beginning of their pro careers. Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon and Patrick Ewing were in college. The NBA’s championship series was still being shown on tape delay — 11:30 p.m. ET, then-Johnny Carson time — to the East Coast of the United States. And no one knew what to call the series.
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Those comments have generated some buzz after Brunson received the Larry Bird Trophy for MVP of the Eastern Conference finals after the Knicks swept the Cleveland Cavaliers on Monday night. He averaged 25.5 points and 7.8 assists in the series. The Knicks will face defending champion Oklahoma City or San Antonio in the finals. “I speak from experience,” Hammon said Tuesday. “Allen Iverson got MVP and he lost in the finals. I think the two best teams are probably in the West, but I’m up for being proven wrong. That’s the other thing, I think Jalen Brunson’s a hell of a player, a hell of a player. I’m speaking historically on the NBA with what I said. I don’t know why everybody’s so stuck on that. I said it two years ago. “I said what I said. If he proves me wrong, he proves me wrong.”
NBA History: Jayson Tatum & Jaylen Brown record their 50th playoff game both scoring 20+ PTS, becoming the 8th duo to reach the mark. They join Larry Bird & Kevin McHale as the only Celtics duos to do so. The other duos: 74 - Jerry West & Elgin Baylor; 68 - Scottie Pippen & Michael Jordan; 67 - Shaquille O'Neal & Kobe Bryant; 58 - Kevin McHale & Larry Bird; 56 - Russell Westbrook & Kevin Durant; 53 - Klay Thompson & Stephen Curry; 50 - Tony Parker & Tim Duncan.
NBA: Congrats to @James Harden of the @cavs for moving up to 13th on the all-time PLAYOFFS SCORING list!
Congrats to @JHarden13 of the @cavs for moving up to 13th on the all-time PLAYOFFS SCORING list! pic.twitter.com/pQta1hCVJa
— NBA (@NBA) April 18, 2026
David Aldridge: Larry Bird, on the passing of Hall of Famer Oscar Schmidt Friday: "I always admired Oscar and considered him a friend, he was, without a doubt, one of the greatest players to ever play the game. "It was an honor of a lifetime when Oscar asked me to present him at his well deserved induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. My sincere condolences to Oscar's family."
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NBA Stat: Players with the best winning percentage in the regular season is dominated by (minimum 164 games = two full seasons)… 𝟳𝟲.𝟮% — Cason Wallace ⏳ 𝟳𝟲.𝟬% — Chet Holmgren ⏳ 𝟳𝟰.𝟬% — Magic Johnson 𝟳𝟯.𝟵% — Rick Carlisle 𝟳𝟯.𝟲% — Larry Bird 𝟳𝟯.𝟱% — Festus Ezeli 𝟳𝟯.𝟭% — K.C. Jones
You’ve said it in the book and repeatedly elsewhere that the ’86 team is the greatest of all time. Obviously, they had talent with you, Larry Bird and Kevin McHale and Bill Walton just joined the team. But why does that team have the edge over the 1995-96 Chicago Bulls or the Golden State Warriors during their championship runs? Robert Parish: “Bill Walton. The league did not have an answer for William. Nobody had an answer for William. I felt like that was the difference maker. The Bulls and the Warriors couldn’t do anything with Bill Walton coming off the bench. We had an MVP coming off the bench. [Bill] Wennington or Luc Longley would’ve had their hands full. William was a tough, tough cover. The Golden State Warriors do it collectively with their defensive strategy and don’t depend on individual defense. Still, I just don’t see how anybody can deal with that. I think Bill Walton was like Moses Malone. You couldn’t quite figure them out. There is something about the way he plays the game and the way he goes about his business with getting it done. Playing against a left-handed ball player kind of throws your rhythm off a little bit. Those two guys messed my rhythm up with that style of play. That’s the best way I can describe it.”
DeMarcus Cousins: Larry Bird is for sure a legend, but you know, the new talking heads in this new generation of basketball like to put guys like LeBron, KD, Kawhi ahead of Larry on the all-time list. Does that bother you at all when you hear things like that? Robert Parish: First of all, with all due respect to those guys, they're not in the same conversation with Larry. The best of the best, it's hard, hard to get a seat at that table. The only one that I think may be able to get a seat at that table other than obviously LeBron and Durant… but both are old-school! I'm talking about the new guys. Maybe the big fella up there in Denver, Nikola Jokic.
Robert Parish: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. To answer your question, his teammates didn’t challenge him. You can tell by how he looked at me, the deposition and stance that he took. There ain't nobody that challenged Michael. Michael had unchallenged power on that team. And rightly so. He was the main man. He should have had that. But, I just let him know that he's not the first superstar that I played with. Sh*t, Larry Bird was a superstar. I wasn't in awe of Michael Jordan. And I told him so. Sh*t, I played with a bad motherf*cker. Shit, Larry's one of the all-time greats. So why am I going to be in awe of Michael Jordan, may I ask? Let me give you a little context, how all that came about. The challenge, we scrimmage every day, when I was with the Bulls, same as when I was with the Celtics. So first, I was playing with the first team with Michael, Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman. And then Phil Jackson put me with the second unit and put Luc Longley back on the first unit. So we beat them four straight games. And so after the scrimmage was over, I asked Michael how did he like that ass whooping. So he took offense to that. [Laughing]