Coach Larry Bird Returns To Much Different Boston -- Old Legends Fade Away; Sometimes They Return

BOSTON - The 8-year-old girl with the Ron Mercer jersey and the nervous smile struggled with the question: "Do you know who Larry Bird is?"

"Yeah," Callie Christian said, not at all sure, as she gazed toward the FleetCenter ceiling, unaware that the answer was hanging on a banner with Bird's retired number 33.

"What did he do?" her father, Gary, asked as they sat behind the Boston Celtics bench before a recent game.

Callie paused. She thought. And she took a wild guess.

"Dyed his hair?" she said.

"No," her father said, laughing. "You're thinking of Dennis Rodman."

Time passes. New fans come. Old legends go. And, sometimes, those legends come back.

More than five years after he retired as a player, Bird returns today to the city he thrilled for a decade with his passes, his passion and his game-winning baskets.

But now he's the enemy. Bird has one consuming desire in his first trip to Boston as rookie coach of the Indiana Pacers: beat the team he made great.

"I enjoy going back," he says. "But I want to go back and win a basketball game."

That's one thing that remains the same for the fiercely competitive Bird amid many changes since he last dribbled a ball on the enduring parquet floor.

The Celtics brought that floor with them when they moved from the dirty but historic Boston Garden to the clean but characterless FleetCenter. The team Bird led to three championships had its worst record ever last season and is rebuilding under Rick Pitino.

Young fans who never heard of Bird wear the jerseys of Celtics rookies instead of his. Only one current Celtic, Dee Brown, played with him.

And Bird, a small-town Indiana native who once avoided neckties as if they were turnovers, will be wearing a suit.

"I want to know who dresses Larry," former teammate Cedric Maxwell says. "Dapper, for Larry, was a shirt with a collar."

That Bird has taught his players to look good on the court is no surprise to his former coaches.

"The work ethic is there. He'll prepare them," says Bill Fitch, the Celtics coach when Bird joined them out of Indiana State in 1979. "They know what he's done. So the respect is there."

So is the success. Indiana was 24-11 through 35 games compared with 17-18 a year ago when it missed the playoffs for the first time in eight seasons.

"I thought Larry would be a good coach because he wasn't like most stars," says Jimmy Rodgers, Bird's coach in Boston for two seasons and now a Chicago assistant. "He was always working on finding little things to give himself an edge."

That won't change today. Sentiment is not part of Bird's strategy when there is a game to be won.

"Larry would probably cut one of his legs off if he could win this game, beat Pitino before a national television audience as a conquering hero coming back," says Maxwell, now a Celtics broadcaster.

Bird claims it's just another game and says, "I hope they boo. Maybe that would get my team motivated enough to play hard."

What does make the day special for him is that Robert Parish, his teammate for 12 seasons, will have his number 00 retired at halftime.

But the loudest ovation could go to Bird. Boston fans didn't have much to celebrate in the two full seasons without a playoff berth since the FleetCenter opened.

"People will be cheering for him, but Larry's not playing, he's coaching, and they still want the Celtics to beat the Pacers," Brown says.

Indiana will try to make sure that doesn't happen.

"Larry doesn't make a big deal about too much," the Pacers' Jalen Rose says, "but for us as players, we know how big it's going to be for him, and we know how much he wants to go back and have a great showing."

For all the hoopla surrounding the event - national television, Parish's ceremony, the first Pitino-Bird matchup - the luster is dimmed because Bird never played in the building.

"If I was going back to the old Garden," he says, "it would be completely different."

That's where he played his first NBA game on Oct. 12, 1979. He had 14 points and 10 rebounds as Boston beat Houston 114-106.

He also won his last game at the Garden on May 15, 1992. His 16 points, 14 assists and six rebounds helped force a seventh game of the Eastern Conference semifinals in Cleveland. But the Celtics lost that and, three months later on Aug. 18, 1992, Bird retired.

He spent the next five seasons in the team's front office, occasionally scouting players. He also played a lot of golf near his home in Naples, Fla.

But that didn't provide the competition he enjoyed in basketball. So today, he'll be back in Boston trying to beat the team in the green-and-white uniform that was his for 13 seasons.