Although many saw Bird’s well-known steal against the Detroit Pistons, not many were aware of its history.
It’s remarkable how frequently Larry Bird figures in the greatest NBA tales.
Many of them are about Bird being bored and looking for ways to push himself, and many of them are about him telling a defender exactly what he is going to do and then completing it. To add some spice to the game, he once played it with his left hand.
While some of those anecdotes are humorous, not all of them are, especially the ones with Bill Laimbeer.
Bird detested Bill Laimbeer mostly because he believed that Laimbeer had attempted to harm others.
The back-and-forth between Laimbeer and the Celtics, especially the moment when Robert Parish simply laid Laimbeer out during a playoff game, is a major portion of this video.
The most amazing aspect of this tale, though, is that it was during that very series that Bird infamously stole the ball with the game in the balance and found Dennis Johnson for a layup just as the clock was about to run out.
The narrator notes that he committed a noble act of retaliation when he stole Isaiah Thomas’s inbounds pass, which was meant for Laimbeer.
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