Recently a large number of stories about basketball legend Larry Bird have been popping up on my YouTube feed. I have almost always have considered myself a fan of Bird’s dating back to the 1979 NCAA Basketball Tournament.

I was like a lot of other basketball fans during the 1978-79 season. Bird had existed beneath the radar for me until about midway through the 1978-79 season, when the Indiana State team he played for was embarking on what would be an unbeaten regular year. Indiana State was considered a small school, even though it competed in the Missouri Valley and was a Division I outfit.

The Sycamores, which share the spotlight with the Ohio State Buckeyes as having seeds for mascots, finished the season unbeaten, but very few experts believed they were good enough to win the NCAA championship. They had Bird and a shooting guard named Carl Nicks, who were superb players and the Sycamores made it all the way to the title game against Magic Johnson and Michigan State. In that game I was rooting hard for Indiana State, largely because it was a heavy underdog and one thing that turns me off is the loud pronouncements of TV’s talking heads about one team or another not having any chance to win. The noisy clamor was all about Michigan State and Magic Johnson and how no one, especially a bunch of hicks from the Missouri Valley were going to beat the best of the Big 10.

As it turned out, Johnson and Michigan State were the winners. Johnson outscored Bird and Michigan State won by 11. Listening to the “experts” crow about how they knew that would be the outcome was too much for me to take. Right on the spot I became a Larry Bird fan.

Magic Johnson went on to have an outstanding NBA career with the Los Angeles Lakers. And in due time I came to appreciate Johnson, both as a man and as a player.

But there was something special about Bird who went on to play for the Boston Celtics in the NBA, so I continued to be an admirer.

It seems like there is a new appreciation of Bird these days, and I’ve heard speculation that it is racial in nature. Most of the big stars in the NBA currently and throughout history are black. The number of white super stars is considerably smaller. Could Bird’s popularity have something to do with that?

One of the YouTube segments that I’ve watched addressed that issue. An interviewer asked the late, great Wilt Chamberlain if Bird’s popularity had anything to do with his being Caucasian. “There might be a little of that,” Chamberlain said. “But the fact is that Larry Bird is one of the most talented players to ever have played the game. The man could play at a level that few others have ever reached.”

There is open debate these days about who the best five players were in NBA history. Some are angry because others have omitted LeBron James from their top five. Others are angry because Michael Jordan was listed too low on another’s list. But one thing that most evaluators agree upon is that Larry Bird was far and away the best “trash talker” in basketball history. What made Bird’s trash talking memorable is that almost always he could back up whatever he said.

The one incident that is told often these days is the “In the trainer’s lap” tale. It happened in a game in which Bird scored his career best 60 points against the Atlanta Hawks. Toward the end of the game after he had shown he was white hot shooting wise, he came down the court and addressed the Hawks’ bench “In the trainer’s lap--who wants it?” By that he meant that he was going to hit a deep three-pointer in front of some poor sucker’s face. One of the players challenged him and Bird shot a high rainbow that swished the net. The challenging player bumped into him and accidentally knocked him down on the trainer’s lap. The cameras captured Atlanta’s Cliff Levingston and Eddie Johnson leaping to their feet and celebrating on the Hawks’ bench out of amazement that Bird had accomplished exactly what he said he would.

Bird tormented a lot of players with his trash talking, but Dennis Rodman tells the story that when he was guarding Bird early in Rodman’s career, Bird made four consecutive shots. Bird then began yelling at Rodman’s coach Chuck Daly, “Who’s guarding me Chuck? Is anyone guarding me? You better get someone on me or I’m going for 60.” Later Rodman said he draped himself all over Bird in an effort to play effective defense and Bird was yelling “I’m open. Hurry up before they notice no one is guarding me.”

Bird won three consecutive of the three-point shooting contests that are usually held in connection with the NBA All-Star game. He usually had a comment or two to make at the beginning of the contests about how we were going to win. When he took the court in quest of his third three-point title, he looked at the rest of the competitors and said “Who is coming in second?” As usual he was able to back up his boast by winning the event. Actually Bird was the winner of each of the first three threepoint shooting events.

The fourth such contest was won by Craig Hodges of the Chicago Bulls. When one reporter asked Hodges if there should be an asterisk next to his name because he won when Bird didn’t compete, Hodges responded by “He knows where to find me.” Learning of Hodges’ remark, Bird replied, “Yeah at the end of the Bulls’ bench.”

In one game against the Dallas Mavericks, Bird told the Maverick’s bench how he was going to score on the next play. “I’m going to stand right here and not move. They’ll pass me the ball and the next sound you will hear is the ball hitting the bottom of the net.” The next time down the floor it happened as he said it would. Those on the Dallas bench remember Bird winking at them after making the shot.

Xavier McDaniel, who by the way played at Wichita State in college, told the story about how he trash talked to Bird first. “I’m going to get the ball right here and I am going to shoot it right in your face,” Bird told McDaniel in response. He then received the ball, found the spot he had pointed out and hit the shot. “I didn’t mean to leave two seconds on the clock,” Bird said to McDaniel on the way back down the floor.

One of the questions Bird would always ask when going to an arena outside of Boston was “What’s the scoring record here? “ The implication was that he was going to try to break the record. On occasion he would ask that question of the person guarding him during the game. If they would ask him why he was asking such a question, Bird’s reply was “Well, you are guarding me, aren’t you?”

That’s just the tip of the iceberg of what Bird is alleged to have said while he was in the trash talking mode. As I indicated earlier, many of these stories are available for viewing on YouTube. I have enjoyed seeing some of them, I guess because I have always been a Larry Bird fan.