by Larry Bird
During the lockout, our guys had stayed together in Indianapolis, working out together every day. Of course I was happy about that, but to be honest, I expected nothing less from them. I knew how much they wanted to win the championship. I also knew that even though they were going at it every day in the gym, it was going to take them a while to get into game shape. I figured we’d be there after around eight or nine games, and we’d be all right.
Well, when we got to that point, I could see they were in shape, but we weren’t playing any better, and that concerned me. We didn’t seem to have the killer instinct we had the previous season. The beauty of the year before was that whenever we needed a big play, or a big basket, it was someone different almost every night who stepped forward and delivered. That didn’t happen in the 1999 season.
Reggie Miller didn’t have a very good year. I kept thinking he was going to find his rhythm, but he never really did. He hit so many big, big shots for us the season before. This year, he had the same opportunities; he’d be looking at some wide-open game-winners, and he’d miss them.
Reggie wasn’t the only one who was off. Our whole team took a step back. The only guys who played as consistently as the year before were Dale Davis and Jalen Rose.
During the regular season, we lost six games by one point. Six games! That, more than anything, really bothered me. We’d get a lead, and instead of putting the hammer down and closing out teams, we’d relax. We just aren’t a powerful enough offensive team to do that.
If I could do anything over again, I probably wouldn’t have put so much pressure on them to win the championship. I think it got to them. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything to them about it. I should have told them they had to win the division, and go from there. I shouldn’t have kept saying, “This is our year to win it all.” But they’re smart guys. They’ve been around. They knew this was our best chance, especially with the shortened season.
We had some struggles during the regular season, that’s for sure. My honeymoon from year one was definitely over. For the first time, guys were complaining about their roles. Minutes became an issue. Guys like Mark Jackson wanted to be on the floor in the fourth quarter, but the way I had it set up, Mark played the first and third quarters and Travis Best played the second and final quarters, primarily because he’s the better defender of the two. I know it was hard for Mark and Chris Mullin and Dale, veterans who have been around a long time, to have to sit for stretches of the game. I never liked to sit as a player either. If you are any kind of competitor, you want to be in the game. But like I explained to Mark, I was doing what I thought was best for the team. Besides, like I told those guys, once we got into the playoffs, I wasn’t going to make them sit and watch from the sidelines.
I took a lot of heat from people for starting Chris Mullin in the playoffs. I don’t care. When you are a veteran, and you have paid your dues, you have a right to be out there. There was no way in the world I was going to take that away from him, or Mark, or anyone else. But Chris also knew that if he wasn’t hitting, I was going to go to the bench to bring someone in.
We got things in order in the final couple weeks of the regular season. Derrick McKey, who had missed most of the year because of a knee injury, was back in action and gave us a defensive stopper to put the clamps on the high-scoring shooting guards or small forwards. We won four in a row to close out the schedule, but I still wasn’t entirely happy because we weren’t going into the playoffs on a roll like we had done the previous year. I remember telling the press at the time, “I don’t know if this is sufficient enough.” I know that with any championship team I played on, we went into the postseason on a big high.
I was nervous about the playoffs. We played Milwaukee in the first round, and I was scared to death of them because they had the kind of team that shot very well from the outside, and they were always changing their defense, so I didn’t know what to expect. I never expected we’d sweep them, and I sure as hell didn’t expect us to sweep Philadelphia in the second round. They were young and energetic, and they had Allen Iverson, but our guys played so well, none of that mattered. We got to the Eastern Conference Finals without losing a game, and I was feeling really good about our team.
Our players were feeling it too. They were enjoying practice and playing together, and I liked our chances, even though I knew New York was on some kind of roll of their own and they were tough defensively and would want to take it to us with their athleticism. I always had faith that when you put New York’s starting five on the floor, and then ours out there next to them, we should come out ahead.
I knew coming into this job that this team had some liabilities. I knew we wouldn’t conquer the world every night, but I wouldn’t have imagined we could play as badly as we did against New York. It seemed like we could never get three guys to play well on a given night. They exploited our lack of athleticism. We didn’t take advantage of the obvious size advantage we had underneath. I can remember telling Rik Smits, after Patrick Ewing was declared out of the series because of a partially torn Achilles tendon, “They don’t have anyone who can guard you.” Why couldn’t we take advantage of that? I don’t have the answer.
When you look at it, you realize what a great opportunity we missed. First, New York lost Patrick, who was playing on one leg because of his Achilles. I’m friends with Patrick, and I wanted to see him out there. After he went out, there was all this talk about how New York was a better team without him because they could play up-tempo and all that, but there’s no way I’m going to buy that. That’s B.S.
We didn’t take advantage of Patrick being out. Then, when Larry Johnson sprained his knee in Game 5, we didn’t take advantage of that either.
There’s no question all the controversy surrounding the Knicks brought them together. There was all this talk of whether Jeff Van Gundy would keep his job or not, and I think all the controversy helped their team. It gave them something to rally around. I think Van Gundy is a good coach. I didn’t like it, though, when he went to the press and claimed we had put a bounty on Marcus Camby’s head. I thought that was garbage, and I felt it would backfire on them big time.
When you look at the series, the turning point was definitely Game 3. The series was tied 1–1 at that point, and we were going to New York with plans of winning both games. There’s no doubt we should have won Game 3. That’s obvious. But the big call at the end of the game killed us. Just killed us.
We were up by three with the game clock running down to single digits, and the Knicks inbounded the ball. Their plan, I believe, was to go for a quick two, but Jalen deflected the inbounds pass, so whatever play they were running was busted. Antonio Davis was guarding Larry Johnson, who ended up with the ball in the corner. Tony made a stab at the ball and that put him off balance. Tony hit Johnson, who took another step, then shot the three-pointer. The shot was good and the refs called a foul. We lost on a four-point play, which is impossible. I told Antonio not to worry about it, because the guy should have been shooting free throws. There’s no way that foul was in the act of shooting. It was well before the shot.
But I understand you should never put yourself in that position. We were trying to protect the lead again, and we have to take responsibility for that.
Antonio was pretty upset after the game. He had his head down, like we all did. I was ready to do anything it took to get them to concentrate for the next game, but it really wasn’t a problem. They were ready. They understood they HAD to win Game 4 after what had just happened.
Game 4 was a gut check game for us. Jalen Rose stepped up and made some really big plays. Chris Mullin hit some key jumpers. Reggie had another quiet night—he was three for 10—but we got scoring from Antonio too, so we managed.
But then they got to Game 5 and they let down again. What happened in Game 3 took so much out of them, and then they expended all this effort to even it again in Game 4, it was like they ran out of gas or something. I still have a hard time with that. Here
was this major monster game, one of the biggest in franchise history, on our floor and half our guys didn’t show up. It made me sick to my stomach.
I’ve always said Game 5 is the most important game in a series. You have to have that one. I told reporters before that game that Rik Smits was going to have a big game. I wasn’t just saying it—I truly believed it. He hadn’t played well at all up to that point. He had broken his toe and it was giving him trouble. It was painful for him to plant his foot and pivot. On top of that, his chronically sore feet were giving him problems again.
Every once in a while I’d ask him how he was doing. From all indications he was all right. He said the toe was hurting him but his feet were actually okay. I was relieved to hear that. I worried more about his feet. The broken toe, I figured, he could play through.
Leading up to Game 5, he looked pretty good in practice. He was running and jumping around. I remember saying to Dick and Rick, “Wow, I think he’s going to be okay after all.”
I don’t know why Rik couldn’t get it together in Game 5. He really couldn’t do anything. We needed him so badly and he just wasn’t there for us. I didn’t have to tell him that. I’m sure it was one of the lowest days of his life.
His big problem was getting into early foul trouble. When you have to pull a guy after 30 seconds because he has two quick fouls, that causes all sorts of problems. Imagine sitting all day thinking about the game, and getting yourself mentally prepared, then going out there and finding yourself back on the bench in less than a minute.
Smits finished with eight points and six rebounds in Game 5. The media was all over him. For the first time I can remember, Rik ducked out without talking to reporters. He knew how devastating it was. Our crowd, which had seen us go ahead by as many as 14, was stunned. Reggie scored 30 that night but couldn’t knock down the big ones down the stretch. Suddenly, we were in deep trouble and we all knew it.
I really challenged Rik before Game 6. Sometimes he responds better when you do that. I told him, “Rik, if I can’t get anything out of you tonight, we can’t win.”
Then I turned to the rest of the team and told them we needed people to step up and give us more. I said to them, “There’s one guy in this locker room who I know is going to go out there and bust his ass, who is going to give us absolutely everything he has. He’s never going to stop playing hard. I know Dale Davis is going to do that for us. Now who is going to follow him?”
Rik Smits played pretty well in Game 6. But that game went like all the others. Not enough of our guys came to play. Chris Mullin didn’t score a basket. Mark Jackson didn’t give us much. Antonio Davis didn’t either. I think he had only one rebound. He’s one of those guys that when Smits gets into early foul trouble you can say, “Tony, Rik’s not with us tonight, bail us out, okay?” And he’ll go out and do it.
In spite of all that, with 6:58 left in the game, it was a tie score. We had the ball, our whole season was on the line, and what happened? We got called for two traveling violations. The turnovers in that game killed us. We had 26 for the game. That explains it all.
When I watched the Knicks, I saw them make the kind of big plays that turn games around. We did the same thing to opponents the previous season. Marcus Camby is the player who killed us. He had energy and lift, and those tips that he kept slamming down on us were the daggers in our heart. You watch him on film and he has excellent timing. He waits, and waits, then darts in just at the right time to make the play.
Latrell Sprewell played well for the Knicks too, but he didn’t kill us. Someone asked me, looking back, if I wish we had pulled the trigger on the Sprewell trade, but I don’t. The price—one of our top big guys—was too high. I don’t have any regrets about that.
I know what people were saying about us. They were saying our guys couldn’t handle the pressure, but I’ve seen Reggie and Mark in way too many situations where they’ve come up with big money baskets to believe that.
In retrospect, it all comes back to Game 3. We blew that game, then came back and fought like champions in Game 4, but couldn’t follow through in Game 5. I guarantee you one thing: if we had won Game 3, we would have won Game 4 too. It’s disappointing it didn’t turn out that way.
You can’t expect that to happen when you turn it on and off the way we did. You have to show up for every play, every night, if you want to win a championship.
I think our team, including the coaches, were all waiting for Reggie to go off and have one of his amazing games. We all sat back and said,“Reggie’s going to have it the next game,” instead of someone else stepping up and saying, “Let me try and get this done.”
The one thing I won’t listen to is people saying we were too cocky, or that we didn’t put in the effort to win. It’s not like these guys didn’t try. I never questioned whether they wanted it or not.
All you had to do was walk into our locker room after Game 6 to see that. Mark Jackson took it harder than anyone. He knows this was our year. He understands there may never be another opportunity like the one we just let get away.
For me, the hardest guy to face was Donnie Walsh. He worked so hard and for so long to build this team, and I know it was crushing for him how things ended. He usually comes into the locker room after every game, but he wasn’t around much in that last series. It was too hard for him. My pal Slick Leonard was the other guy who was really down. He wanted so much for us to get to the Finals.
Reggie wasn’t around for very long after it ended. I didn’t really see him to talk to him, but I know he felt bad. Reggie was three of 18 from the floor in that final game. Unbelievable. I did find Rik Smits and told him he played with a lot of heart in Game 6. A few days later, he was quoted in a foreign magazine as saying he was thinking of retiring because he was tired of playing in pain. I hope that’s just his frustration and disappointment talking. I’m expecting him to be back next season.
We had our break-up dinner, but I didn’t want to be there. Neither did the players. We all sat around and moped and felt sorry for ourselves. Actually, I’m still doing that. I know we had a good ball club, but the bottom line is we didn’t get it done. People tell me, “There are twenty-seven other teams that didn’t win it,” but that’s supposed to make me feel better? And then there’re the ones who say, “Well, at least you got back to the Final Four.” That’s total B.S. That means nothing to me, or my players.
I know what we need next season. We need younger players. We’re going to have to make some pretty tough decisions this summer. I said in my first season I would resign rather than see this team trade Reggie Miller or Mark Jackson. But now I realize sometimes you have to make difficult business decisions like that, for the good of the team. I’m not saying we’re going to trade those guys, but my guess is, Donnie is going to look at everything. One thing is obvious to me: we can’t come back with everything the same as last season.
That’s why, on draft day, we traded Antonio Davis for Jonathan Bender, a high school star from Picayune, Mississippi. It wasn’t easy trading Tony. I hated to do it. He’s a great guy and was a big part of our team. He was also our best defender. But Tony wanted to start next season and we couldn’t guarantee that. Donnie felt that for the best of the franchise we needed to be younger. I didn’t know much about Bender when we traded for him—only what I’ve seen on tape. But Donnie’s convinced this kid is going to be a star. I have to admit, though, if Lamar Odom was there at number five (the Clippers took him with the number four pick), we would have grabbed him. By trading Tony, we now have Tony’s money ($4.2 million) to go out and sign a free agent, someone like Lorenzen Wright.
I’m sure that’s not the only move we’ll make. There might be other big changes, and some other little changes as well. Little things like moving Chris Mullin out of the starting lineup, or featuring Jalen Rose in the offense more. I don’t know right now. It’s too hard for me to even think about.
As a coach, when you lose a game, you go back and look at the film and see
what you could have done differently to help your team, whether another defensive strategy would have worked, or whether a different play call in a certain situation would have made sense. I haven’t been able to do that yet.
I haven’t felt this low about basketball since I played for the Celtics and we were swept by Milwaukee in the 1982–1983 season playoffs. Back then, the way I handled it was that I went home to French Lick and played basketball all summer and vowed to be better than I ever was. But as a coach, I can tell you that there’s a much bigger feeling of despair.
I’ve never been one to take games home with me, but this series has been brutal for me. After two straight sweeps, I was so convinced we’d be focused enough to beat New York. But when it was finally over, it felt like we were a complete and utter failure.
I told Donnie I would decide my future from year to year, and that’s what I’ve done. He wants me to come back and coach next season, and I guess that is probably what I’ll do. I’m not a quitter. But I will stick to my original promise of coaching only three years. That will be more than enough for me.
It’s hard to say what our team will look like next season. We’re all still a little raw from what’s happened. The younger guys were disappointed, but they know they’ve always got next year. For the older guys, who are at the end of their careers, it’s more personal. It hurts more, because they can sense it slipping away from them.
I know exactly how they feel.