The hardwood is silent now. The roar of Boston Garden, the sharp snap of a perfect pass, the swish of an impossible shot—all echoes in the mind of a man who, at nearly 70, can barely jog. For Larry Bird, once the most cunning and relentless competitor in basketball, the price of greatness is counted not in championships or trophies, but in the daily struggle of a body that gave everything and has nothing left to give.
The Brain on the Basketball Court
Larry Bird was never just another star. They called him “the brain” on the basketball court—a player who saw the game in dimensions others couldn’t. While most NBA legends spent their youth in structured leagues and polished gyms, Bird’s education came on the cracked blacktop of French Lick, Indiana, facing grizzled men who couldn’t outrun him, so they outthought him. Bird absorbed every lesson, learning that basketball was chess, not checkers.
This foundation made him the greatest touch passer the league had ever seen. Bird’s anticipation was so sharp he’d start making passes before the ball even reached his hands. Between 1984 and 1988, he was among the most efficient playmakers in the NBA, threading the ball through windows that didn’t exist for anyone else. His off-ball movement was relentless—spinning, cutting, boxing out, always a step ahead. Defenders couldn’t keep up with his mind, let alone his body.
Genius Born of Necessity
Bird’s defensive genius, too, was a product of anticipation. Early in his career, his size and constant motion made him a fringe all-defensive player, but as his body began to betray him, his mind took over. By his final seasons, Bird’s defense was all about positioning, quick hands, and reading plays before they happened. He became a master at compensating for lost athleticism with pure basketball IQ.
His shooting was its own kind of artistry—unorthodox, with his body turned slightly sideways, but perfectly aligned from hip to elbow. Bird’s unique form prioritized accuracy and consistency, challenging the orthodoxy and setting new standards. He was the first to enter the exclusive 50/40/90 club (50% field goals, 40% threes, 90% free throws), and did it in consecutive seasons, all while averaging nearly 30 points per game.
The Beginning of the End
But Bird’s brilliance came at a terrible cost. In the summer of 1985, with a multimillion-dollar contract in his pocket, Bird was shoveling gravel to build his mother’s driveway. That single act triggered severe back pain—a pain that would haunt him for the rest of his career. But the injury wasn’t just bad luck; Bird’s back was genetically vulnerable, the canal for his spinal nerves unusually narrow. His doctor called it “the beginning of a process, not a single catastrophic event.”
From then on, every game was a test of will. Bird spent nights in a back brace, rode a stationary bike for an hour before tipoff just to loosen up, and submitted to endless manipulation by physical therapists. “Every time I would play, I was wondering if I was going to be in a wheelchair,” he once admitted. The pain was constant, sometimes searing, shooting down his legs and robbing him of movement.
Bird’s style—diving for loose balls, battling 7-footers, flinging himself into the stands—only accelerated his decline. His vertebrae compressed and twisted, nerves trapped, bones unstable. He played through surgeries, Achilles injuries, bone spurs, and chronic pain in his feet and hands. He ran miles before and after games, driven by an inner need to do “more, more, more.” But his body simply couldn’t keep up.
The Final Battles
By 1992, Bird’s back limited him to just 45 games. Still, even in agony, he averaged 20 points, 10 rebounds, and 7 assists—a stat line that would make most players’ careers. He retired that August, just after winning gold with the original Dream Team in Barcelona, his body at last forcing him to yield.
The Celtics retired his number 33 immediately. Bird moved on to coaching, leading the Indiana Pacers to the NBA Finals and winning Coach of the Year in his first season. Later, as president of basketball operations, he won Executive of the Year. But the physical toll never let up. Chronic back problems and other health issues forced him to step down from the Pacers’ front office in 2012. He developed atrial fibrillation—an enlarged heart, another echo of a life spent pushing the limits.
The Quiet Cost
Now, as Bird nears 70, the limits are everywhere. He can no longer work out strenuously. Jogging and sauna sessions are the extent of his exercise. His body simply won’t allow more. “You don’t see many 7-footers walking around at the age of 75,” Bird has observed, reflecting on the short shelf life of basketball giants.
His story is, in many ways, a tragedy—a reminder that the cost of elite athletic performance can extend far beyond the glory years. Yet Bird’s life is also a triumph. He revolutionized basketball with his mind, not just his body. He became an icon not for his athleticism, but for his relentless pursuit of perfection, his ability to see the game’s hidden angles, and his refusal to play any way but all out.
Legacy Beyond Pain
Bird’s legacy endures not only in championships and accolades, but in the way he changed how the game is played and understood. He showed that genius could compensate for lost speed, that anticipation could make up for failing joints, and that greatness is as much about mental resilience as physical gifts.
He is revered not just for what he won, but for what he endured. The “Hick from French Lick” became an icon because he kept going, long after his body told him to stop. Bird’s life after basketball, with its daily struggles and limitations, is a sobering reminder of what it takes to reach the top—and what it costs to stay there.
Yet, for Larry Bird, the suffering is inseparable from the story. His pain is the price of having played the game his way: all in, all the time. And in that, there is a different kind of victory—one that lasts long after the cheers have faded.
Larry Bird will die young. Just ask him.
INDIANA PACERS COACH Larry Bird wasn’t even sure which play his team was running because his damn heart was kicking out again. He wondered if anyone noticed him sweating profusely, his shirt drenched under his suit and tie, an all-too-familiar symptom whenever his heart started rattling around his chest like a basketball in an empty trash barrel. The waves of nausea and dizziness overtook him next, muddling his concentration and leaving him feeling light-headed. When the sudden arrhythmia would occur during his training sessions in his playing days — long before he’d informed any medical personnel about it — he would always lie down immediately and nap for several hours, because if he didn’t, he risked losing consciousness.
But on March 17, 1998, the 41-year-old coach of the Eastern Conference-contending Pacers, in the thick of a hotly contested game with the defending champion Bulls, could hardly recline and sleep it off. “Oh god,” Bird thought as he tried to steady himself on the Indiana sideline. “Please don’t let me pass out on the court.”
Instead, the referees whistled the customary television timeout, allowing Bird to sink into the chair his team dragged onto the court for him during stoppages in play. When Bird had been hired in 1997, he’d made the unorthodox decision to entrust assistant Rick Carlisle with drawing up offensive plays in the huddle. Now, as Carlisle diagrammed Indiana’s next move against Michael Jordan and the Bulls, Bird wiped the sweat from his brow (and his wrists and neck) and tried to regain his composure.
He finished the game without further incident, avoiding detection from anyone on his staff. Bird, who has an enlarged heart, was diagnosed in 1995 with atrial fibrillation, an abnormal heartbeat resulting from electrical signals being generated chaotically throughout the heart’s upper chambers. With proper medication, exercise and diet, atrial fibrillation can be controlled, but Bird abhorred medication and was prone to skipping his pills. Part of the reason, he admits, was his own fatalistic view of what the future would bring.
“I tell my wife all the time, ‘You don’t see many 7-footers walking around at the age of 75,'” says Bird, who’s 6-foot-9. “She hates it when I say that. I know there are a few of us who live a long time, but most of us big guys don’t seem to last too long. I’m not lying awake at night thinking about it. If it goes, it goes.”
It’s a macabre outlook for Larry Legend — but he’s hardly alone in harboring it. Ask a bunch of NBA big men and the consensus is that their atypical size and the strains placed on their bodies during their careers cause them to deteriorate more quickly and die younger. The bigger they are, the younger they fall — or so they think. Is it possible they’re right?
MOSES MALONE WAS never late.
That’s why Calvin Murphy was so puzzled. It was 6 a.m. on a Sunday last September, and Murphy’s friend and former teammate hadn’t shown up for breakfast at the Waterside Marriott in Norfolk, Virginia. They were expected to tee off at 7:30 in a charity golf tournament. Malone, who hailed from nearby Petersburg, was a tournament regular each year and had joined fellow NBA alums at the Chrysler Hall in Norfolk on Saturday night for a comedy show. A three-time MVP center, a 13-time All-Star, Malone was not just NBA royalty, he was also beloved. He’d mingled with old friends, including Paul Silas, who’d snuck up from behind and elbowed him in the back — all the better to jar his memory of their battles in the NBA trenches. “I’m glad it’s just you,” Malone quipped, “or I’d have to do something to hurt you.” Just after 2 a.m., Malone, 60, told Murphy he was tired and would see him in the morning. His final words that night: “Don’t be late.” Now it was Malone who was tardy, so Murphy called his cellphone, figuring Moses might have snuck up to the health club for a quick jog on the treadmill. “Mo was a workaholic when it came to staying in shape,” Murphy says.
The call went unanswered. But before Murphy could head up to Malone’s room to check on him, tournament organizers urged Murphy to follow the others to the golf course while one of the event coordinators, Sandra White, went to knock on Malone’s door. No answer. She summoned security, but when they tried to gain access to the room, the chain was still across the door. When they finally busted in, they found Malone lying dead in his bed, his eyes wide open.
NBA referee Tony Brothers, who runs the tournament, received the news of Malone’s passing at the course and pulled aside Murphy, who promptly collapsed at the referee’s feet and began sobbing uncontrollably. “I just blacked out,” Murphy says. “It caught me off guard. Mo never complained about anything. And now he’s gone? I just couldn’t understand it.”
Seventeen days earlier, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, veteran NBA center Darryl Dawkins — legendary destroyer of backboards — had also died of a heart attack. He was 58. Dawkins, like Malone, had no known previous health issues. “First Darryl and then Moses,” Silas says. “It just shocked me. It makes me wonder, ‘What should they be doing? What should I be doing?'”
He’s not alone. During a seven-month period last year, the NBA lost, in addition to Dawkins and Malone, Anthony Mason, Christian Welp and Jack Haley to heart-related deaths — not one of them was over 60 — while 52-year-old Jerome Kersey died suddenly of a pulmonary thromboembolism. Current players LaMarcus Aldridge, Jeff Green and Channing Frye have had heart issues. Bulls coach Fred Hoiberg cut his playing career short because of a heart condition and underwent open heart surgery last spring. Seven-footer Eddy Curry was hospitalized with an irregular heartbeat at age 22.
But health concerns for NBA bigs extend beyond cardiac distress. Six-foot-11 power forward John “Hot Rod” Williams died in December due to complications from prostate cancer. He was 53. Seven-foot-7 Manute Bol left the game at 36 due to rheumatism and died at 47 from acute kidney failure. The NBA’s all-time leading scorer, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, underwent quadruple coronary bypass surgery last April at age 68, six years after the 7-2 Hall of Famer battled a form of blood cancer.
Then there’s legendary 6-11 center Bill Walton, who suffered from such debilitating nerve pain in his back that in 2008, at age 56, he says he contemplated suicide. Walton — whose book, “Back From the Dead,” will be published in March — estimates he’s undergone 37 surgeries, including fusion surgeries on both ankles. “When you are in that never-ending cycle of pain, it puts you in a space of darkness, sadness and overwhelming depression,” Walton says. “You go through stages. The first one is, ‘Oh my god, I’m gonna die.’ The next stage is, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to die.’ And the third stage is, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m going to live, and this is what I’m stuck with.’ That’s the worst stage of all.”
In 2009, Walton underwent an 8½-hour spinal fusion surgery that required four bolts, two titanium rods and a metal cage — akin to an Erector Set — to put him back together. Now he travels the country advocating for athletes to be proactive in their treatment. “We athletes are our own worst enemies,” Walton says. “We don’t listen to our bodies, we don’t listen to our doctors. We don’t realize until later in life that health is everything. Without it, you’ve got nothing.”
