Editor’s Note: As part of a new series for his podcast “What’s Wright with Nick Wright,” FOX Sports commentator Nick Wright is ranking the 50 best NBA players of the last 50 years. The countdown continues today with player No. 7, Larry Bird.
Larry Bird’s career highlights:
- Two-time Finals MVP
- Three-time league MVP
- 12-time All-Star
- Nine-time first-team All-NBA, one-time second team
- Three-time All-Defensive second team
- Two-time 50-40-90 club
- 1980 Rookie of the Year
There are only about a dozen players in NBA history who have separated themselves as the best in the league for a prolonged stretch. Even fewer have been regarded as the greatest of all time, even briefly.
This is the company Larry Bird keeps.
“[He] is a guy whose apex was one of the five best apexes we’ve seen in NBA history,” Wright said. “He came into the league a little old, left the league a little early. But while he was there, from the moment he stepped onto the court, was one of the best players in the league and stayed like that for a full decade.”
Larry Bird ranks No. 7 on Nick Wright’s Top 50 list
A skilled scorer, passer, rebounder and clutch performer, Larry Bird is No. 7 on Nick Wright’s list of the Top 50 NBA Players of the Last 50 Years. Bird was a three-time MVP, won a pair of Finals MVPs and led the Boston Celtics to five NBA Finals appearances and three NBA championships.
Bird, indeed, arrived in the NBA as a clutch, almost fully formed superstar.
The 6-foot-9 forward was close to turning 23 and immediately ready to lift the league’s most storied franchise back into title contention following a couple of down years. In Bird’s first season, 1979-80, the Celtics won 32 more games than in the previous year.
After earning a landslide victory over Magic Johnson for Rookie of the Year (and finishing fourth in the MVP race), Bird went for 34 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists against Moses Malone’s Rockets to close out his first playoff series. He dropped another 30-10 and a 20-20 in the conference finals, but Boston fell to Julius Erving’s more experienced 76ers.
The two teams would meet again in the conference finals one year later, with Bird ensuring a Celtics win. He pulled Boston out of a 3-1 hole by averaging 27-13-5 for the series, making the go-ahead basket in a Game 7 decided by a single point. He averaged 15.3 points, 15.3 rebounds, 7.0 assists and 2.3 steals in a Finals triumph over Houston, but the series MVP went to Cedric Maxwell (18-10-3).
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