{"id":496846,"date":"2026-02-22T13:34:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T13:34:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/496846\/"},"modified":"2026-02-22T13:34:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T13:34:09","slug":"why-larry-bird-nearly-didnt-make-it-to-the-nba-book-excerpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/496846\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Larry Bird Nearly Didn’t Make It to the NBA: Book Excerpt"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tLarry Bird<\/a> should have been excited about attending Indiana University in the late summer of 1974. The man who had recruited him to come there, Dave Bliss, had been chasing him for more than a year, convinced of Bird\u2019s greatness. Bliss, a young assistant coach at Indiana with blond hair and blue eyes, recorded his thoughts about Bird in his journal again and again. \u201cGuy is going to be really good,\u201d Bliss wrote. \u201cBird\u2019s better\u2026 Bird\u2019s better than all.\u201d Bliss didn\u2019t even care who else the Hoosiers signed that year. \u201cAs long as Bird is one!\u201d he noted. And most importantly, Bliss had convinced his boss, Hoosier head coach Bobby Knight, to at least consider the possibility of Larry Bird.<\/p>\n

\n\tKnight, just 33 years old at the time, had already developed a habit that he would carry with him for the rest of his life: He didn\u2019t like to listen to others, especially not his critics. He had just led Indiana to its first Final Four in two decades in only his second season in Bloomington. He knew what he was doing. But Knight was inclined to listen to Bliss. The two men had been together since the late 1960s, when Knight was the head coach at Army and Bliss was a newly commissioned Private First Class, working on the coaching staff. In a lot of ways, Knight had taught Bliss how to recruit and Bliss had proven himself to be good at it. If Bliss wanted Knight to drive an hour south to French Lick \u2014 to watch some kid who most college coaches had never heard of, in a place that most people had never visited, in a tiny gym in one of the poorest counties in the state \u2014 Knight would do it. And so, there he was on at least three occasions in the winter and spring of 1974: Bobby Knight was in French Lick to see Larry Bird.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a big deal in a small town. At one game that Knight attended at Springs Valley High School in late January 1974,\u00a0a crowd of some four thousand people tried to pack inside the gym \u2014 twice the legal capacity of the building and double the population of French Lick itself. Springs Valley lost that night. In his frustration afterwards, Bird reportedly flipped off opposing fans outside. And the next visit from Knight didn\u2019t go much better. This time, they met inside the home of Bird\u2019s longtime mentor, his former high school coach Jim Jones, on Skyline Drive, on the hill behind the high school, and Knight seemed frustrated that he couldn\u2019t connect with Bird or get him to talk much at all. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe very best of Knight was there,\u201d recalled Jim Jones\u2019 wife, Joyce. On this evening, Knight was humble, kind, and invested in Bird. Still, it didn\u2019t matter. Bird seemed to be torn between Indiana and Indiana State, a small program that was playing in the hinterlands of Division I basketball, in danger of being banished to Division II, about to fire its head coach, and incapable of filling its new arena in Terre Haute. It made no sense to Knight that Bird would even consider Indiana State, and according to people who were there in Jim Jones\u2019 living room on that visit in 1974, Knight finally expressed this thought out loud. \u201cIf you\u2019re thinking about going to Indiana State,\u201d he told Bird, \u201cI don\u2019t know if you can play for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBy then, almost everyone in town had an opinion about where Larry Bird should go to college. And in April 1974, with everyone whispering about it, the boy finally made his choice. He walked into Jim Jones\u2019 office at the high school and declared that he wanted what everyone else wanted: He was signing with Knight at Indiana.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the days to come, Knight drove down one last time for a small signing ceremony in the Valley gym. But it was a seemingly joyless affair. In a photograph that one of Bird\u2019s classmates snapped that day and published in the Springs Valley Herald, neither Bird nor Knight is smiling. They stand next to each other, yet miles apart, as if separated by a yawning chasm that was about to swallow Larry Bird whole.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\n\tTHIS YEAR MARKS THE 50th anniversary of Bird\u2019s collegiate debut. And because of Bird\u2019s success later \u2014 his NBA<\/a> titles with the Boston Celtics, his MVP awards in the 1980s, his rivalry with Magic Johnson, and his celebrated status as an American icon \u2014 it\u2019s easy to forget that he almost didn\u2019t escape French Lick at all. In this alternative reality, we don\u2019t know his name and he never plays basketball. Instead, he gets a job at the Kimball piano plant in French Lick or the cabinet factory over in Jasper, toiling as a wood finisher like his father. And the most tenuous period of Bird\u2019s life came in 1974, at the moment he threw in his lot with Bobby Knight.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\n\tIn this little window of time, Bird\u2019s parents were divorced and struggling. His mother was working two jobs and his father, a longtime alcoholic who was often unemployed, was careening toward disaster.\u00a0Lots of people didn\u2019t know how hard life was for Larry, including Knight, Bliss, and everyone else in Bloomington, and Larry was about to make a series of choices that wouldn\u2019t help. It\u2019s these choices that would send Bird tumbling into that chasm, and it all begins in late August 1974 when his uncle drops him off in Bloomington outside his new home, a massive dormitory: McNutt Quad.<\/p>\n

\n\tMCNUTT HAD A REPUTATION for two things that Bird liked \u2014 or would come to like: beer and basketball. Half of Knight\u2019s team lived at McNutt, including every freshman on the Hoosier roster and four players soon to be selected at the top of NBA drafts. That August alone, there were five future NBA players moving into the dorm rooms, 42 years of future NBA service greeting their roommates, and 37,810 future NBA points unpacking their bags. In short, Knight had placed Bird with his people. And they weren\u2019t just clumped together for companionship; they were at McNutt because it was a short walk to the gym, the arena, and a handful of outdoor basketball courts. On a sprawling campus, the players were close to what mattered most to them: basketball. And when they weren\u2019t playing, there were plenty of activities at McNutt to keep them occupied \u2014 namely, parties. The McNutt kids were known for throwing ragers, complete with kegs, eight varieties of alcohol, and women.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt should have been a good fit for Bird; he even knew people on campus, people from back home. His high school girlfriend \u2014 a cheerleader named Janet Condra, with long hair, fair skin, and a warm smile \u2014 lived in the dormitory next door, a five-minute walk away. This could have worked.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tIndiana head coach Bobby Knight with his 1973 team, which went to the Final Four. The following year, he recruited Bird to come play for the Hoosiers.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRich Clarkson\/NCAA Photos\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Bird was troubled in Bloomington from the start. McNutt housed some 700 kids \u2014 about one-third of the population of French Lick \u2014 and Bird found the campus outside the dormitory walls bewildering. At any given moment that August, 30,000 students were eating in the dining halls, drinking beers on Fraternity Row, trying out for the tennis team, attending the president\u2019s welcome picnic, or piling into cars to go to the drive-in movie theater off campus. This wasn\u2019t a college. \u201cIt was more like a whole country,\u201d Bird said later. And he felt like a foreigner in this place. He didn\u2019t even fit in with his roommate, Jim Wisman.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe two young men ended up there together for the simplest of reasons: They were the last two basketball recruits in need of a roommate, and they didn\u2019t seem all that different, at least from afar. Wisman was the son of a postal carrier in Quincy, Illinois, a small city on the banks of the Mississippi River. He was white, like Bird; Midwestern, like Bird; small-town, like Bird. And if it didn\u2019t work out between Wisman and Bird, there were other basketball players for them to befriend at McNutt. They could hang with the two other freshmen on the team, who were living down in room 386, roll with upperclassmen Quinn Buckner and Scott May, or find future NBA No. 1 draft pick Kent Benson somewhere in the same dorm. It would be fine.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut the room assignment, random as it was, revealed something important about the operation at Indiana: Bliss had recruited Bird and Knight had signed him. But Knight had failed to get to know Bird at all. And it didn\u2019t take long for people to realize that pairing Wisman with Bird was a mistake. Wisman was polite and articulate \u2014 a good kid, but also different. \u201cHe was,\u201d Bliss realized too late, \u201cmaybe the antithesis of Larry.\u201d Bird had one bag of clothes while Wisman had arrived on campus that August with a full wardrobe. On the day they moved in, Bird watched Wisman unpack, thinking, \u201cMan, I don\u2019t have nothing.\u201d Teammates who visited their room that August left with the same feeling. John Laskowski, a senior guard, remembers going there to welcome the two freshmen and seeing three things in their room that he would not forget: Wisman\u2019s full closet, Bird\u2019s empty one, and the wide gulf that seemed to exist between two new roommates. \u201cIt was just kind of two different worlds,\u201d Laskowski said. Even Wisman\u2019s generosity didn\u2019t help. At some point, he told Bird he could borrow his clothes, and he even loaned Bird money when Bird\u2019s cash ran out. But Wisman was almost seven inches shorter than Bird; most things in that closet weren\u2019t going to fit him. And by early September, Bird began asking himself a question: \u201cHow can I keep wearing Jim Wisman\u2019s clothes and accepting Jim Wisman\u2019s money?\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn dark times like these, Bird had typically sought solace in one place \u2014 the basketball court. But Bird couldn\u2019t find any peace at Indiana. In pickup games in the Hoosiers\u2019 arena, Assembly Hall, his new teammates treated him poorly, Bird thought. He complained later than Kent Benson \u2014 the Hoosiers\u2019 6-foot-11 center, a future two-time all-American \u2014 took his ball. Sometimes, in the schoolyard picks before scrimmages, Bird wasn\u2019t selected at all. Then, in early September, he injured his toe while playing on the outdoor courts. In addition to everything, Bird was now hobbled, limping off to class on an enormous campus that was 15 times bigger than French Lick.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt all started piling up inside of him until he began to consider a plan: Maybe he\u2019d go home. Maybe he\u2019d leave.<\/p>\n

\n\tBird said later that he told no one about his intentions. Said he kept his doubts and his darkness to himself. But folks on campus that September saw through him. And at least one person sensed Bird\u2019s frustration during the final pickup game that Bird played that month. The guys were in the locker room after a scrimmage. People were showering and Bird was angry, recalled team manager Larry Sherfick, because he wasn\u2019t playing or because people weren\u2019t passing him the ball.<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Bird stewed over these slights, Sherfick said, one of the players in the locker room made a comment loud enough for everyone to hear: \u201cTell us again, Larry \u2014 where are you from?\u201d The implication, Sherfick said, was clear. Bird was a nobody from nowhere. And at this point, Sherfick recalled, Bird turned to him for help. \u201cHe looks at me,\u201d Sherfick said. \u201cHe\u2019s pointing at me, and he says, \u2018He knows where I\u2019m from. Tell him where I\u2019m from.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was getting late by then and Sherfick was annoyed by the shenanigans. \u201cFrankly, I don\u2019t want to get into this,\u201d Sherfick recalled thinking. \u201cI\u2019m just trying to get my job done and get back before the dinner line.\u201d So, he stayed out of it. He said nothing. He didn\u2019t come to Bird\u2019s defense \u2014 a choice he\u2019s thought about from time to time over the years. \u201cI\u2019ve felt some remorse that I didn\u2019t stick up for him,\u201d Sherfick said, especially after he heard about what happened next. On the second Friday of September 1974, about three weeks after Bird arrived in Bloomington, Bird walked into Bliss\u2019s office, Bliss recalled, and announced that he was leaving.<\/p>\n

\n\tOutside, it was starting to feel like autumn. Cool weather was moving in and kids on campus had big plans for the weekend. The Hoosiers were playing the Illinois Fighting Illini the next day in their first football game of the season, and students at Willkie Quad, a dorm about a mile from McNutt, were planning a big party. But Bird wasn\u2019t going to be there. Bliss could tell he was serious about leaving, and there was nothing Bliss could do to stop him. Knight was out of town that Friday. He was making an appearance at a coaching clinic at a Marriott Hotel up in Fort Wayne. People were putting down $25 at the door to meet the great coach of the Indiana Hoosiers, to hear him talk about basketball, and to laugh at his inappropriate jokes, and by the time Bliss reached Knight by phone sometime later, Bird was long gone.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe had packed his things, walked out to Highway 37, and hitchhiked home. A trucker got him as far as Mitchell, and Bird figured out the rest from there.<\/p>\n

\n\tLARRY\u2019S MOTHER, GEORGIA, was furious when she learned that her son was back in French Lick. His father, Joey, took a different view of things. According to Larry\u2019s recollection, Joey supported Larry\u2019s decision to leave Bloomington. \u201cDon\u2019t look back,\u201d the father informed the son.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in the fall of 1974, Joey Bird wasn\u2019t in the best position to be giving advice. He had been making poor decisions for at least 30 years. He never finished eighth grade; left a good job to enlist in the military in 1944 when he was still just 17; went AWOL and got caught drinking liquor on his ship before even shipping off to World War II; re-enlisted to go to Korea; spent a miserable winter there, fighting the Communists; came home scarred by what he had seen in those frozen foxholes; took to drinking; became a presence in the local bars around French Lick; couldn\u2019t seem to hold down a job; and now seemed to be descending into darkness. Around the time that Larry returned home, his father was talking about ending his life, ending it all.<\/p>\n

\n\tAgainst this backdrop, the son made a curious choice of his own. Larry enrolled at a small technical school in West Baden Springs, just north of French Lick, and joined the basketball team there. He had left Indiana University \u2014 one of the best basketball schools in the country, run by one of the most successful coaches in America \u2014 to play for Northwood Institute.<\/p>\n

\n\tNorthwood was exactly as small as it sounded. It had a total enrollment of about 250 students and a strange and singular campus. Northwood\u2019s dorm rooms, classrooms, and offices all existed inside an old domed hotel that had seen better days. The grounds outside were overrun with weeds and the upper floors of the hotel were completely vacant. There weren\u2019t enough students enrolled at Northwood Institute to fill them. For all of these reasons, members of the Northwood team were shocked when their head coach informed them that Larry Bird was joining the roster. Glen Tow, a five-foot-five guard, almost felt bad for Bird, and his teammates felt the same. They had enrolled at Northwood because they didn\u2019t have an option to play elsewhere. The team\u2019s center, Dave Earley, might have been working in the timber business with his father over in Seymour if he hadn\u2019t come to Northwood. One of the team\u2019s forwards, Kent Hutchinson, might have enrolled at a little school in Franklin, Indiana, if a Northwood coach hadn\u2019t reached out to him. In fact, basketball wasn\u2019t even the primary sport for many of the guys on the team. They were there to run track or play baseball. And now they were sitting in the windows of their rooms upstairs, watching Larry Bird walk across the atrium of the old domed hotel and wondering what he was doing there.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tBird as a high schooler. He had trouble adjusting from his tiny hometown of French Lick, Indiana, to IU, where the student body numbered around 30,000.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tIndiana Basketball Hall of Fame<\/p>\n

\n\tBird seemed to be asking himself the same question. At one point shortly after he showed up, Northwood\u2019s head coach asked Tow to help Bird get the books he\u2019d need for class. \u201cSo I got the list and everything and took the list to Larry,\u201d Tow recalled, \u201cand Larry just looked at me and said, \u2018I\u2019m not going to need these books.\u2019\u201d Tow wasn\u2019t sure what to make of the comment; he and all the other guys were hoping to get a degree. But for all the doubts they might have had about Bird\u2019s academic commitment, no one had questions about his work ethic in the basketball practices held that fall in a little gymnasium across the road.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe gym, called Sprudel Hall, was the last remaining relic of long-defunct West Baden High School, and it too was showing its age. At places on the floor, the ball wouldn\u2019t bounce at all. Bird\u2019s new teammates couldn\u2019t wait for practices to be over. Northwood\u2019s culinary students were always churning out great food \u2014 lasagna, chicken cordon bleu, and Cornish hens served in warm nests of baked bread \u2014 and no one wanted to miss the meals. But Bird didn\u2019t care. While everyone left for dinner, he\u2019d stay at Sprudel Hall, shooting and shooting. Sometimes, Dave Earley, the team\u2019s best player, would drive by hours later and find the lights still on and Bird still inside, playing games against himself. He\u2019d bounce the ball off the bleachers, retrieve the off-kilter carom, and throw up off-balance shots from 35 feet out. Or he\u2019d drop-kick the ball off the wall, chase it down, and shoot from wherever he scooped it up again. It didn\u2019t matter if he was 10 feet from the basket or 50, Earley recalled. Bird would just turn and shoot, preparing himself for some future moment in some future game.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe Northwood guys had never seen anything like it, and Earley began to wonder: Who is this Larry Bird? He\u2019d heard stories that Bird\u2019s father drank too much and couldn\u2019t hold down a job, and because there was nothing to do in town, Earley and a couple of other guys went out one night that fall to investigate the situation for themselves. They piled into Earley\u2019s 1968 Oldsmobile, followed the railroad tracks behind the high school, found Georgia Bird\u2019s house in the dark, and idled in front of it on the street.<\/p>\n

\n\tThey probably weren\u2019t there for more than 10 seconds, but Earley would never forget the silence that filled the car \u2014 \u201cdead silence,\u201d he said \u2014 as everyone eyed Bird\u2019s house. It was small, crooked in places, and not just poor. It sort of felt sad, Earley said, and he realized in that moment why Bird stayed in the gym and never seemed to go home.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere wasn\u2019t really anything to go home to.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSOMETIME THAT NOVEMBER, just before Northwood\u2019s first game and a couple of weeks before Bird\u2019s 18th birthday, Bird stopped coming to practice. He quit the team and dropped out of school again \u2014 developments that surprised no one at Northwood. Tow had wondered from the start if Bird would stay, and the next time Tow saw him, Bird wasn\u2019t playing basketball at all. He was working for the city, riding on a garbage truck and collecting trash.<\/p>\n

\n\tTow didn\u2019t say anything to Bird that day; he might have just waved, he thought later, as the garbage truck rolled by. He certainly didn\u2019t say what he was thinking: that Bird was wasting his talents, that Bird was wasting his life. It disappointed Tow, and it disappointed lots of other people, too. They\u2019d see Bird that winter shoveling snow, fixing streets, or picking up the trash and wonder why.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Bird liked working for the city. The job put money in his pockets and helped him buy his first car, a used Chevy. It also gave him something to do while his father unraveled even more. That December, in the county courthouse, Georgia Bird asked the court to hold Larry\u2019s father in contempt \u2014 for failure to pay child support \u2014 and according to Larry, his father went dark. By Christmas, Larry was worried about him, and by the first week of February 1975, the police were looking for him, knocking on the door of Joey Bird\u2019s parents\u2019 house in West Baden.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a Monday, right in the middle of the Springs Valley basketball season, and folks in town had moved on by then. No one was talking about last year\u2019s high school team. No one was talking about Larry Bird. The boy had made his choices and the father was about to make his choice, too. When the police came calling, Joey Bird grabbed a shotgun, turned the barrel around on himself, placed it against his head, and pulled the trigger.<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an instant, he was dead. By the end of that week, Larry was at his father\u2019s funeral, the family gathering on a hill in Dubois County, south of town, and by the end of the month, Larry had bottomed out entirely. He wasn\u2019t playing basketball at Indiana anymore and he wasn\u2019t even playing for the likes of Northwood Institute. He was playing in a men\u2019s league \u2014 glorified pickup basketball \u2014 with a collection of workaday guys who had mortgages, wives, day jobs, and children. One of the greatest basketball players of all time was about to pull off a feat that\u2019s hard to imagine. Larry Bird was about to disappear.<\/p>\n

\n\tExcerpted from the book HEARTLAND: A Forgotten Place, an Impossible Dream, and the Miracle of Larry Bird, by Keith O\u2019Brien, out March 3. Copyright \u00a9 by Keith O\u2019Brien. From Atria Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Publishers. Reprinted with permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Larry Bird should have been excited about attending Indiana University in the late summer of 1974. The man…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496847,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,47171,34409,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-496846","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-book-excerpt","11":"tag-larry-bird","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496846"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496846\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}