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Against the Clippers, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander posted career 30-point game No. 223 and tied Larry Bird for 33rd on the all-time list. He has made at least half his shots in 166 of them (74.4%).
NBA Courtside: Byron Scott on DeMarcus Cousins comments saying Larry Bird wasn’t doing it like Cooper Flagg: “Cooper Flagg don’t got sh*t on Larry Bird. I’m gonna tell you that straight up. Larry Bird to me still is and I even hate saying it like this the coldest white boy I’ve ever seen play basketball because of the fact that he hated for white boys to even guard him because he thought that was disrespectful.” It’s definitely a tough to even compare a guy to Larry Bird that’s only played one season let him play his career out then let’s have this debate at the end of his career.
Without a doubt, the external pressure will be all about reaching the playoffs and advancing. And while Sweeney embraces those expectations head on, they’re nothing compared to the standard he’s determined to place on himself and this group this season. “We want to start with the environment that we create each day,” he explained. “So, our standard and our expectations for ourselves are going to be higher than what anybody else puts on us. If we can do that, now we're in position to execute on what we want to do. And at the end of the day, the thing that we've got to understand is pressure is earned. Larry Bird got the pressure … We want to make sure that we understand when pressure is put on us that nobody's going to put more on us on us than ourselves. And the pressure that is put on us externally, we we've earned it. So, that's how we approach it.”
Jorge Sierra: Longest streaks of consecutive Top 6 MVP finishes: 14 years: LeBron James: 12: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar; 10: Bill Russell; 9: Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, BOB PETTIT. A true NBA great. May he rest in peace.
Q: Dan, we’re easing out of the heavy free agency period that began earlier this summer. There was a lot of talk about the second apron. Can you just explain what the second apron is? Dan Rube: The second apron, that’s a new payroll threshold that was put into this latest CBA [collective bargaining agreement]. And it adds, for the very highest spending teams, greater transaction restrictions and penalties than we’ve previously had in other CBAs. To get a little more specific, the transaction restrictions that apply to teams that have payrolls above the second apron level, they relate to adding new talent. For example, if a team is above the second apron, it can still sign contract extensions with its players and use the Larry Bird salary cap exception to re-sign its players as free agents. What you can no longer do if you have a payroll above that level are things like what we call the mid-level salary exception to bring in a new player, or trade several lower salaried players away in exchange for a single player making the sum of those salary amounts and going above the second apron by even more with transactions like those that add new talent. Where is that second apron threshold set? It increases every year in proportion to other system levels, but for the upcoming season, it’s at $222 million. And that means that in order for those consequences that I described to apply to a team, they’d have to be spending more than $57 million above that $165 million salary cap or more than $20 million above the $200 million tax level. And just to give you a sense for the size of the group the new rules are targeting, historically until shortly before this CBA on average per year, we had about two to three teams spending at that highest tier.
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MAL: Klay Thompson reveals his ALL-TIME starting five C — Shaquille O’Neal PF — Tim Duncan SF — LeBron James SG — Kobe Bryant PG — Stephen Curry Klay explained why he went with Shaq, praising how he completely changed the game, while calling Tim Duncan the definition of consistency. He chose LeBron over Larry Bird and Kevin Durant, Kobe over Michael Jordan because he grew up watching Kobe and eventually played against him, and stayed loyal to Steph at point guard.
Rick Carlisle: ‘Nobody can tell me that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird wouldn't have been top players in the league today. Greatness is going to be great regardless of the era. You are going to try to tell me that Russell wouldn't be great in this era? Russell, the guy who threw up before every game because he couldn't stomach the idea of losing and he had such impact on winning, can you imagine having that guy leading your team? That was the early version of Draymond Green.’
!["In the old days, you knew [Larry Bird's] Celtics were …](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/content-pipeline-sports-images/sports2/nba/logos/7.png?format=png8&auto=webp&quality=85,75&width=140)
It's a dangerous path to specifically go after the Knicks, but it doesn't feel as if they're going anywhere. That is, of course, a similar thought to the way the league felt about the 2025 Thunder, the 2024 Celtics and the 2023 Denver Nuggets. "In the old days, you knew [Larry Bird's] Celtics were at the top and you had to chase them. Then it was Isiah [Thomas] and Detroit. Then Michael [Jordan] and the Bulls," the executive said. "It's not like that anymore. You have to build a sustainable winner that's deep and can play multiple styles of basketball."
Jorge Sierra: Jaylen Brown won more games with Boston than Dave Cowens. (Cowens finished his Celtic career with two titles, one MVP and eight All-Star selections). Only 12 players have more wins in Boston than Brown. The youngest of those 12 are Paul Pierce and Larry Bird.
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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.”
