‘Heartland’ Review: When Larry Bird Took Flight
- 5 hours ago
- 1 min read
Skillful writers like Mr. O'Brien know how to find the tributaries where rich, untold material lies waiting to be excavated.
More than three decades after his final game—a pain-wracked cameo in the United States’s gold-medal win over Croatia in the 1992 Olympics—Larry Bird retains a mythopoeic quality. Michael Jordan and Earvin “Magic” Johnson, the other two members of the transcendent triumvirate that guided the National Basketball Association to global relevance in the 1980s and ’90s, were hewn from the familiar raw materials of basketball stardom—arresting athleticism and self-aware showmanship. But Mr. Bird had about him a different essence, that of the outsider, the stranger, the possessor of mysterious powers (beyond his 6-foot-9-inch stature) that allowed him to dominate without the usual “measurables”—speed, quickness, leaping ability—we normally attach to superstars.