Larry Legend's Leadership

The Team Leadership's last post examined the leadership of Magic Johnson. This week we take a look at Larry Bird. 

• If you put all of us in a room--Magic, Jordan, myself, and Bird, Bird would probably be the guy who walked out of the room at the end of the day.--Isaiah Thomas
• I would be all over him, trying to deny him the ball, and all Larry was doing was yelling at his teammates, 'I'm open! Hurry up before they notice nobody is guarding me!' Then he would stick an elbow in my jaw and stick the jumper in my face.--Dennis Rodman
• A winner is someone who recognizes his God-given talents, works his tail off to develop them into skills, and uses these skills to accomplish his goals.-- Larry Bird

Larry Bird was equal parts clinician and warrior, one half-Socrates, another half-Patton. Cunning, ice-cold, witty, clutch. There is no single, defining trait of Larry Bird's game--it was the arsenal, the variety of ways that he would beat you, that characterized the man known as "Larry Legend," and his leadership.

Bill Simmons once recited a vintage Larry Legend anecdote, which opens with the Bulls ticket staff screwing up his complimentary tickets for a random regular season game, and concludes with a pissed-off Bird torching the Bulls for 44 points, scoring the game's opening 5 baskets, and telling Doug Collins he'll "take it easy now" after raining 33 points in the first half. Simmons eloquently conveys the story's significance as a defining vignette of Bird, the competitor:

"You don’t get the nickname 'Larry Legend' because of Game 7s, you get it because you brought it on those random November nights in Chicago because someone messed up your tickets. That’s a very specific kind of art, a genius crafting his performance with anger and competitive drive. That’s the final level of basketball."

The forces Simmons describes driving Bird are a mix of passion, anger and determination. But, there was one very distinct, prominent aspect inherent in Bird's leadership that so many fierce competitors fail to have--humor.

Bird was notoriously witty, the Ric Flair of in-game smack talk. The effect of this trait was compounded by Bird's very persona, a soft-spoken, Indiana farm hick with a drawled accent and skin perpetually the color of mayonnaise.

The final keynote of Bird's leadership manifested in his play, which was defined by clutch moments and transforming ball movement into human art. The man seemed both impervious to pressure and unrestrained by the limits of human eyesight and muscle reflex. Bird was the ultimate team player who also wanted to be "the guy" when the situation called for it. That's leadership.

Bird's overall game and persona endeared him to his teammates and made him perhaps the greatest kind of leader, one who rose others to his level, instilled a culture of toughness and cooperation, and made the game fun for those lucky enough to play alongside him.

 

Drive: The Story of My Life