Contact Multimedia Reporter Noral Parham at 317-762-7846. Follow him on X @3Noral<\/a>. For more news, visit indianapolisrecorder.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Before the championships. Before the mythology. Before Larry Bird became \u201cLarry Legend,\u201d he was a kid from French Lick, Indiana, hauling trash and wondering where his life had gone wrong.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s the story author Keith O\u2019Brien tells in \u201cHeartland: A Forgotten Place, an Impossible Dream, and the Miracle of Larry Bird,\u201d set for release March 3 (or 3\/3, a nod to Bird\u2019s retired jersey number).<\/p>\n
The New York Times bestselling author of \u201cCharlie Hustle\u201d spent years tracking down everyone who crossed paths with Bird during his formative years \u2014 players, coaches, staffers, teammates \u2014 everyone except Bird himself, who declined to be interviewed.<\/p>\n
Despite this, O\u2019Brien didn\u2019t let that stop him from unearthing a narrative that could have ended before it ever really began.<\/p>\n
In the fall of 1974, Bird dropped out of Indiana University, walking away from legendary Hoosiers coach Bobby Knight. He returned home to French Lick, a tiny town in the second-poorest county in Indiana, and got a job with the city.<\/p>\n
Those miracles came in the form of two men: Bob King, Indiana State University\u2019s head coach with bad knees and assistant Bill Hodges, who understood poverty and being overlooked. In spring 1975, during one of Bird\u2019s darkest chapters, they convinced him to leave French Lick and play for the Sycamores \u2014 a program that couldn\u2019t fill its arena.<\/p>\n
What followed was basketball wizardry. O\u2019Brien traces the construction of a team built from \u201ccastoffs and leftovers, ready to work.\u201d By March 1979, that squad went undefeated in the regular season and captured the nation\u2019s attention, culminating in the NCAA championship game against Magic Johnson\u2019s Michigan State team \u2014 a matchup watched by more than 50 million people that would forever change college basketball and the NBA.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien tilts the camera elsewhere \u2014 capturing Bird practicing jump shots in the wee hours, shunning reporters who described him as a \u201cGreat White Hope.\u201d<\/p>\n
The book also reveals painful truths: Bird\u2019s father, a war veteran, died when Bird was a teen. When Bird arrived at Indiana University, he had almost nothing to put in his dorm room closet.<\/p>\n
But most moving is what happened after the Sycamores lost to Michigan State. Five thousand people waited at the airport. Streets were lined as the team drove back to Terre Haute. An estimated 10,000 waited inside the arena.<\/p>\n
O\u2019Brien will appear at several Indiana events surrounding the book\u2019s release, including March 4 at the Johnson County Museum of History in Franklin and March 5 at Morgenstern Books in Bloomington.<\/p>\n
\u201cHeartland<\/a>\u201d is available wherever books are sold as early as March 3.<\/p>\n Contact Multimedia Reporter Noral Parham at 317-762-7846. Follow him on X @3Noral<\/a>. For more news, visit indianapolisrecorder.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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