Larry Bird Signed Jersey
Larry Bird Signed Jersey
If you’re trying to find a Larry Bird signed jersey, you’ve come to the right place.
This article will explore the journey of this NBA superstar and you’ll find the signed jersey in the middle of the article.
“Larry Bird” by Kip-koech is licensed under 
For years, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has been one of the biggest sporting competitions in the world.
Many big franchises have existed over the years, with the two largest arguably being the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers.
Both teams are bonafide giants of the sport, having created worldwide legacies. Even if you know nothing about NBA, you’ll know who the Celtics and the Lakers are!
Part of that comes down to the amazing playing rosters that both franchises have carried over the many years.
However, if you want to look at the era of genuine dominance for either team, then it would make sense to go back to the early days of dominance in the NBA by the Boston Celtics.
Having been trailblazers in the sport as a whole, it was the Boston Celtics who helped to do so much to make basketball a national sport, and then a global sport.
And part of their appeal came from Larry Bird.
Born on the 7th December, 1956, Larry Bird is one of the greatest basketball players of all-time.
Growing up in West Baden Springs, Indiana, the Celtics legend was raised in the small town of French Lick.
From small towns, though, giants can rise and become genuine legends of whatever industry happens to be their most passionate hobby.
For Bird, it was always going to be one thing and one thing only: basketball.
Larry Bird Autographed White Boston Celtics Jersey
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The early days of Larry Bird
Growing up in a small town like French Lick, it’s easy to see why one might have limited ambition. For Bird, though, his talent shone through from a very young age.
He was a major player in the local basketball scene, arguably the best in the town. He went to the Spring Valley High School in FL, and became a major part of their successful basketball team.
Indeed, by the team he left high school and graduated in 1974, he was the all-time top scorer for the school team.
He was shown to be both a technically proficient player and a tremendous athlete, which helped to land him a place at Indiana University.
He was able to go there and learn from the legendary Bob Knight. However, despite the success, Bird felt unsure of the opportunity and reneged.
The size of the campus was seen as too daunting for a young Bird, and he withdrew. Instead, he enrolled at Indiana State the next year.
The beginning of a legend
Having gone to Indiana State, he partook in his Junior year which was a relative success. So much of a success, in fact, that he was picked in the NBA Draft as the sixth overall pick by the Boston Celtics.
Thus became the beginning of a relationship that would span many, many years.
A return year to Indiana took place, and he led the Indiana Sycamores to the NCAA Championship Final, facing off against a heavily-favoured Michigan State Spartans team in the championship match-up.
This was also the beginning of another major part of Larry Bird’s career: in the game against the Spartans, he came up against what would become both his biggest rival and his best friend: Ervin Johnson, otherwise known as Magic Johnson.
They faced off head-to-head for the first time, and it formed the basis of a friendship and rivalry that would span the length of their entire careers.
Though Michigan won the Championship, Bird decided it was time to move on from Indiana. He left as the USBWA College Player of the Year, and also won the Wooden Award as well as the Naismith Award.
Leaving as the 5th highest scorer in NCAA history, too, it would be fair to say that he arrived at the Celtics ready to make a big impression.
The early Celtics days
He signed with the Celtics on a massive $650k per year contract, at the time a record for a player.
However, he soon justified the investment as he began to score on a regular basis, netting Rookie of the Year whilst netting an average of 21.3 points per game in his career.
The 1979-80 NBA season, then, seen him score high as well as get an impressive 10.4 rebounds per game on average. He even led the Celtics in his first season for both steals and minutes played.
In a single year, he’d become integral to the future of the entire team.
In the pre-season for the 1980-81 season, the Celtics brought in Robert Parrish from Golden State, and also drafted in Kevin McHale.
The trio would become the legendary frontline for the Celtics, and for many the greatest frontline in the history of the sport.
That season, the Celtics posted a ludicrous 61-21 record and also pushed all the way to the NBA Finals.
There, they faced off against the Houston Rockets to land the first NBA Championship of Larry Bird’s career. Safe to say that it would not be the last.
With Johnson joining the Los Angeles Lakers in 1979 and making waves on his own, too, there was hope of a dramatic East-West match-up.
The new player
This set the tone for a decade of dominance for both teams. Indeed, throughout the 1980s there was a spell when the Lakers and Celtics took part in every NBA Finals series across the decade. If one didn’t make it, the other would.
With Bird becoming known for scoring at key moments and also for being an excellent and aggressive defender, Bird soon took over the league despite having rather limited pace and agility.
For Bird, though, he made up for a lack of agility on his feet by being excellent at reading the intentions of his opponent.
He could follow them around the court, anticipate where they would go next, and beat them to the punch.
With outstanding defensive composure, he could often stop shops or block lanes with consummate ease.
This made him not only a consistent scorer, but a brilliant defender and thus one of the most complete players in the entirety of the NBA.
Across a 13-season stretch with the Boston Celtics, Bird took part in the playoffs every single season.
However, he lost out on much of the 1988-89 season with injury, failing to add to his title crowns won in the 1984 and 1986 season.
Part of his longevity and consistency came from the fact that while he wasn’t the most athletic and agile, he could read the game tremendously well and thus could last longer on the court.
For many, Bird was one of the major archetypes in a big change in how basketball was played.
His consistently excellent all-around game made him a fine example for any young player coming through, transforming how they thought about and tackled the game moving forward.
The Celtics became a major player in the NBA not only because of the attacking trio of McHale, Parrish, and Bird, but due to the changing style they played.
Unlike other teams, they became tactically fluent and knowledgeable enough that they could stop their opponents having success by reading their play.
As time wore on, they became as good at stopping play as they did at making it!
A legendary career
Given everything that Bird put into his career, it might come as no surprise to learn that he is one of the most decorated men in NBA history.
Across 13 years with the Celtics, he made the NBA All-Star team a whopping 12 times and was also the All-Star Game Most Valuable Player in the 1982 series.
He was also named NBA MVP from 1984 until 1986, showing an immense consistency that was unmatched by many in the game.
However, come the end of the 1990s Bird was in relative decline physically. Despite scoring 20,000 career points in 1990, his play was drastically slowed down by injury to his back.
It left Bird unable to compete to the same standard, but his chance to really set a marker down as an all-time NBA legend arrived in 1992.
Then, Bird took part in the United States professional athletics team that went to the Olympic Games.
Alongside Bird was the likes of Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan, with many of the stars of the NBA heading to the Olympics to represent the USA.
The team was known as the Dream Team, and with such incredible talent over the rest of the world they crushed all resistance, easily winning Gold for the USA at basketball.
A few weeks later, though, a clearly tired and physically drained Bird decided to call it a day.
Finishing his career with averages of 24.6 points per game and 10 rebounds per game, he left the Celtics as one of their most decorated and prolific players of all-time. For Bird, though, the fun was not over: there was still a long career in the game to come.
To the surprise of many, though, it wasn’t quite the coaching career that many assumed Bird would move into.
Post-playing career
Bird decided to move into a front-office special assistant role when he finished up, re-joining the Celtics in this important role.
For five years, he played a role in helping the Celtics move on from the post-Bird era, but it wasn’t enough.
Craving the desire to get back involved on a day-to-day basis, a unique offer turned up for Bird: a return to his home state of Indiana to manage and coach the Indiana Pacers.
Head Coach was a coveted position, and for Bird it was a chance to start a coaching career that he had always wanted.
In his first season with the Pacers, he recorded an impressive 58-24 record – the best record in the franchise history for the time – and was even named NBA Coach of the Year in 1998.
However, success was not to come in the form of trophies but in genuine progress and improvement for one of the lesser lights of the NBA.
In the year 2000, he took the Pacers to the NBA Finals, but he stepped down as coach after the defeat. This led to a hiatus until he returned as President of Basketball Operations in 2003.
For many, Bird almost became as synonymous with the Pacers as he did the Celtics.
Many years on their bench and in the administrative roles that he held meant that Bird managed to help both out his beloved Celtics as a player and his home state as a coach.
In 2011-12, Bird was named as the NBA Executive of the Year.
This gave Bird a unique hat-trick to become the only player in history to win NBA MVP, Coach of the Year, and Executive of the Year.
Retiring for a brief spell, he returned as President of the team in the summer of 2013.
Celebrating the game changer
While today he’s known for his coaching and presidential roles in Indiana, NBA fans before the 1990s will know Bird as one of the best of all-time.
He was named in the Top 50 NBA Players of All-Time in 1996, and he’s also been listed as one of the Top 50 Athletes of the 20th Century by ESPN.
Today, he’s gone down in history as a legend both in his home state of Indiana and his adopted state of Boston.
While it’s a shame that we never got to see Bird back at the Celtics in some capacity over the years, it would be foolish to doubt the love of either player or franchise.
Having long been seen as one of the most interesting players in NBA history, we can confirm that Bird is not only a tremendous player but a tremendous player.
An exceptional professional who put his time and effort into helping himself and his team throughout his career, he’s a fine example to all.