Bird Watching (2 page)

Maybe that’s why when I walked up to the podium at my press conference in the Boards and Blades Club at Boston Garden and finally said out loud that it was over, I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted off my shoulders. I can’t tell you what a relief it was not to have to push myself through all that pain anymore.

I can honestly say I hated basketball at that point.

As soon as that press conference was over, me and some of my good friends, including my physical therapist, Dan Dyrek, went out and celebrated. There was nothing to be sad or sentimental about. It was time for me to be done.

I had known for months before the actual press conference that I wasn’t going to play anymore. When my back started flaring up in training camp, before the start of the 1991–92 season, I knew that was probably it, but I don’t think I actually admitted it to anyone—probably not even to myself, really—until January or February of 1992. I wasn’t afraid of life after basketball. It was more a matter of finishing a job. I don’t believe in giving up in the middle of anything. But it really wears you out when you are in constant pain. I had what they call a nerve impingement, which meant the L-4 vertebra was sitting twisted and compressed on the L-5 vertebra, and there was a nerve trapped in between the two. It left my spine very unstable. The bone kept pushing itself into the nerves in my back, and it was just terrible. Dan Dyrek would work on it so he could temporarily push the bone off the nerve, but before long I’d be feeling that burning pain shooting down my leg, and I’d be in serious trouble all over again.

By this time Dan had been treating me for almost a decade, and he was really concerned about the permanent damage I might be doing to myself. There were a whole bunch of times we had serious discussions about retirement. We came to a compromise, and worked out a system where we’d make decisions from game to game. Dan would examine me, and if my back was really “hot,” or agitated where the disc was, he would tell me I had to sit out. If Dan gave me a thumbs-down, that was the final word for that night. Neither the Celtics nor I questioned him—most of the time. Looking back, it was a ridiculous way to finish my career, but at the time I just put my head down and tried to get through it.

I missed 37 games in my final season. People knew I was hurting, but very few of them had any idea how bad it really was. It got to the point where I was wearing a brace almost all the time except when I was practicing or playing. I even had to wear it to bed. I really hated that brace. It was made of a quarter-inch of fiberglass and went from my chest all the way down to my hips, and it was really uncomfortable. But I knew it was necessary. One thing is for sure: I wasn’t going out much at that point. I didn’t want anyone to see me in that thing.

The day I finally didn’t need that brace anymore, I took it outside and destroyed it.

Even though I knew I was playing my last season, I kept it to myself. The last thing I wanted or needed was a big commotion at every city we went to. I had no interest in a retirement tour. Our team was still pretty competitive at that point and that’s all I wanted to concentrate on, getting as deep as we could into the playoffs and, if we caught a break or two, maybe into the Finals. Of course the media was speculating on how much longer I’d play, but I wasn’t saying a word.

Well, not publicly anyway. I do remember walking into Dan’s office early in 1992 and telling him, “Dan, the back is really bad. Just get me through this season and I’ll quit.”

Dan said what he had been saying for over a year: “Larry, you should quit right now. Your back is unstable. Every day you go out there, you are risking further damage. It’s over. You have to stop playing.”

I knew Dan was right, but I couldn’t see quitting in the middle of the season. I promised myself I wouldn’t do that, because people had bought season tickets that year thinking they were going to see me play. Most of them knew my back was bad and I might miss some games, but they were counting on seeing me at least some of the time, and I didn’t want to let them down.

For the rest of the season I lived on anti-inflammatory drugs and wore that stupid brace. Both Dan and the Celtics trainer, Ed Lacerte, did the best they could to hold me together. It seemed we’d be talking every two weeks or so about retiring, but then I’d have a period of ten days or so where I felt okay, and that would be the end of it. Then, like it always did, the pain would come back. Both Dan Dyrek and Ed Lacerte have told me I played that last season in a state of unconsciousness.

The truth is, I should have retired a couple of years earlier, after I had my first back surgery in the summer of 1991. We had played Indiana in the first round of the playoffs that spring, and I was in really bad shape. The burning down my leg was so bad I couldn’t feel my toes. I couldn’t sit down, I couldn’t stand up. I was in shock, really, but how could I stop in the middle of the playoffs? I remember after we lost Game 4 in Market Square Arena, it was about the worst I had ever felt. I wanted so badly to be healthy, because we had to go back to Boston for a deciding Game 5, and there was no way I could let that team beat us, because I didn’t want to hear about it all summer from my friends who lived in Indiana.

I went to see Dan, and he started feeling around, and he said, “There’s nothing more I can do for you.” I left his office thinking, “Boy, this really is it.” I got in the car and started driving, but the pain was so intense that I had to stop after about a mile and get out and walk around.

Somehow I managed to play Game 5 at the Garden. A lot of times I would feel lousy heading into the game, but after Dan worked on me a bit, and all my adrenaline got pumping, I could block it out. I knew I’d pay for it later, but that was later. We beat the Pacers in Game 5 and won the series, but not before I banged my head on the parquet floor chasing after a loose ball. I don’t remember much of it, to be honest, because when they took me into the locker room I was in a daze. But I do remember one thing: after all I had been through with my back, no lump on the head was going to keep me out of the playoffs. I remember sitting in the locker room with our team doctor, Arnie Scheller, and after my head started clearing a little bit, I said to him, “Do I have a shot? Can I get back in there?” He said, “Hey, you’ve done enough. That’s it for you.” So we sit in that training room some more, and I keep hearing the crowd. They’re chanting, “Lar-ry! Larry!” I look at Arnie, and I said, “Aw, hell!” and I get up, I run through that tunnel, back onto the court, and the place goes absolutely nuts. Later, when I got hired by the Pacers, Donnie Walsh said he knew I would play. He said he knew I’d come back, and the place would go crazy, and we’d win the game, which is exactly what happened. Even so, we couldn’t sustain the momentum. We ended up losing to Detroit in six games in the next round, and a couple months after that I had my first back surgery.

The procedure involved shaving the disc, as well as widening the canal where the nerves that led to my spinal cord sat. I knew the surgery was not going to solve all my problems. In fact, the pain was back within a couple months. Fusion surgery had been an option, but the surgeons warned me that very few professional athletes had ever played again following fusion surgery, and I wasn’t interested in being a guinea pig. The truth? I was just trying to buy myself some time.

The same day I had my first surgery, I went out and walked ten miles. My surgeon was very optimistic. He said, “You should come back in January and I’ll take another look, but I think you are going to do just fine.” Well, Arnie brought the surgeon to one of our first games of the season. This doc knows nothing about basketball—he’s an old hockey player. He came in after the game and he said to me, “Larry, the way you play this game, you’re not going to last another month. I had no idea you did all this stuff. Hell, you don’t spend any time on your feet.” He looked kind of worried, but I didn’t pay much attention. I was feeling great!

At the time, we were 28–5, and on our way to the best record in the East at the All-Star break. Not very long after that, I was shooting around before the game, and I turned a little funny, and boom! There goes my back. I couldn’t believe it. I knew right then that was the end of it. I was in and out the rest of the season.

Once I realized my back was still going to mess me up no matter what, I seriously considered retiring right then and there. Dave Gavitt, who had come to the Celtics in 1990 to run the team, kept talking me out of it. Not too many people can change my thinking when my mind is made up about something, but Dave was different. We hit it off from the first day we met. Dave had a lot of innovative ideas about how to help the team, and I loved talking about basketball with him. You can tell he was a former coach—he had some really good Providence teams back in the seventies—because of how he approached people. He understood how a player saw the game, and understood that a team needed to have an identity, and that whatever went on in the locker room, or on the floor, was something that should be shared among each other, like a family.

I was really excited when Gavitt took over as the team’s CEO. We needed someone with his basketball expertise making personnel decisions. I was sure he’d be the one that would win us our next championship—until my back interfered.

I went into Dave’s office about four months after my first back surgery and told him, “Dave, I don’t think I can go on like this. I’m not the same player I was. I can’t play the way I want to anymore, and I’m thinking I should retire.” He put his arm on my shoulder and said, “Larry, I didn’t come here to throw you a retirement party. I came here to help you win a championship.” He gave me a little pep talk about how special our team was, and how the NBA would probably never see another front line like me, Kevin McHale, and Robert Parish again, and then he got into the whole thing about the Celtics tradition and what it meant to the city of Boston, which was why he had given up his job as commissioner of the Big East to take over the Celtics. I’m telling you, Dave was a pretty persuasive guy. He could get you all fired up. I knew he would back me up, whatever I decided, and I guess I didn’t want to let him down. Besides, I agreed with him on one thing: we still had a chance to win a championship. As long as we still had a crack at that, it was going to be hard—impossible, really—for me to give up playing.

The last championship we won was in 1986. It was a dream season. Everybody played at the top of their games—me, Robert, Kevin, Dennis Johnson, Danny Ainge—and we had a great bench. We also had the two best centers in the league. That was the year Bill Walton played with us, and he was just phenomenal. He is the best passing big man I’ve ever seen, and I marveled at the things he could do, even though his feet were a mess and he wasn’t anywhere near the player he had once been. That didn’t matter on our team. Bill did what he could do, and that was more than enough. But what people tend to forget is that one of the big reasons Walton was able to have that kind of success was because of Robert Parish. Robert was an All-Star center, and he started every game, but there were many times when it was Walton, not Parish, who was on the floor in the fourth quarter. On a different team, with a different guy, that could have caused all sorts of problems. Some players get really protective about minutes, or when they are on the court and how much credit they’re given, but not Robert. He was a true pro. He really didn’t care how much he played, or when, as long as it worked for the team. That’s why that year was so great, because it was all about winning. I’m sure there were some days that Robert wished he was out there, but he would never have said so. I’m sure, also, there were times Robert got tired of all the media attention Bill got—and believe me, it was a lot, which I appreciated, because it took some of the spotlight away from me—but in the end, Robert knew his team respected him, and that’s all that really mattered.

Those are the kind of things I told my Indiana team when I took the Pacers job. Never mind what the outside world thinks—what do the guys who are on the court with you, day after day, think? Because they are the ones who know whether or not you’ve given them everything you have. I used to laugh when I read things in the paper about how important this guy was to our team, or how that guy wasn’t helping us. Because many times they had it all wrong. Take Greg Kite. He was a center from Brigham Young who got drafted by the Celtics in 1983, and Bob Ryan, a sportswriter for the
Boston Globe,
was constantly killing him. He’d say things like, “He’s a twelfth man that doesn’t belong in the league, this and that,” but what people don’t understand is that most fans only see the games. They don’t see practice. I always thought the practices were so important—I still believe that—to prepare other guys to play. That’s why our 1986 team was so successful. We had Walton going against Parish every day. We had Scottie Wedman going against me for a number of years, pushing me every day. To the second unit, those practices were their games, especially to a guy like Kite who didn’t play much. He wanted to beat us every day in practice. He never took a day off. He couldn’t afford to. He was excellent for our team. He was a smart player, he knew everything we were doing, and he understood exactly what his role was. I wish I could find me a Greg Kite right now for the Pacers.

After that 1986 championship, everything fell apart. Walton stuck around another season, but he was hurt almost all of it, and he retired after playing only ten games in 1987. The Celtics drafted Len Bias that spring, and he died of a cocaine overdose. That was a real shock. I was taking a shower, and my mom came in and told me. I thought it was somebody’s idea of a cruel joke. Then Kevin hurt his foot the next season, and by the time we got to the Finals against the Lakers, he was playing on a broken foot. It just seemed like we couldn’t catch a break.

Just before the 1988–89 season, both of my heels started really bothering me. This wasn’t a new injury. I had always had some pain down there. Dan said it didn’t help matters that I never stretched those Achilles tendons. He also said there had been some inflammation in that area for some time. But what took this pain to an unbearable level was that, over time, with repeated trauma to that area, I developed bone mass in both heels. There shouldn’t be any bone anywhere near there, and it was embedded in the tendon. I tried to play through it, but it wasn’t going to happen, so they decided to do surgery on both heels and take all that bone out. Dan was against the surgery. He thought he could treat me without it, but I wanted the pain to stop. I told him, “Let’s just get the stuff out of there and worry about the rest of it later.” Originally the doctors said I would miss about three months, but I ended up missing the whole season. I was miserable. It’s no fun watching your team struggle while you’re sitting there on the bench in street clothes.