{"id":42282,"date":"2025-07-28T09:24:07","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T09:24:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/42282\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T09:24:07","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T09:24:07","slug":"was-hall-of-fame-boston-celtics-legend-larry-bird-hard-to-guard-in-his-prime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/42282\/","title":{"rendered":"Was Hall of Fame Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird hard to guard in his prime?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Was Hall of Fame Boston Celtics<\/a> legend Larry Bird hard to guard in his prime? If you ask one of the people who covered him on the biggest of stages in that era, the answer is an unequivocal yes. Speaking in a recent interview with the folks behind the “All the Smoke” YouTube channel, Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> icon Michael Cooper weighed in<\/a> on what it was like to defend The Hick from French Lick (as Bird was sometimes called for a nickname) when he was at his most dangerous as a scorer.<\/p>\n

“People ask me all the time, \u2018Who\u2019s the hardest player (to guard)?\u2019 And I always say, (Bird), because I played against Michael Jordan, George Gervin, Andrew Toney\u2014those guys’,” shared Cooper. “When they passed the ball, they had a tendency to take a break for a second.”<\/p>\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n

“Larry never was going to take a break,” he added.<\/p>\n

\"LOS<\/p>\n

LOS ANGELES – 1987: Michael Cooper #21 of the Los Angeles Lakers looks to pass over Larry Bird #33 of the Boston Celtics during an NBA game at the Great Western Forum in Los Angeles, California in 1987. (Photo by: Rick Stewart\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

“Larry was going to go get an offensive rebound, he was going to go set a back pick\u2014he was going to do something to impact that possession. That\u2019s why he was the hardest.”<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on Celtics Wire: Was Celtics legend Larry Bird hard to guard in his prime?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Was Hall of Fame Boston Celtics legend Larry Bird hard to guard in his prime? If you ask…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42283,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2242,33955,27693,30947,1055,33954,7328,355,99],"class_list":["post-42282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-boston-celtics","tag-george-gervin","tag-hall-of-fame","tag-larry-bird","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-michael-cooper","tag-michael-jordan","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42282\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}