Celtics

"Hey Larry, you ain't hit a jumper since '84."

Larry Bird
Larry Bird and Charles Barkley relax on the sidelines toward the end of 127-83 win over Brazil at the 1992 Summer Olympics. AP Photo/Susan Ragan

Though Larry Bird retired from playing basketball decades ago, stories are still filtering out about his legendary trash-talking.

The latest example came from former NBA All-Star Jamal Mashburn in an interview on Players’ Tribune podcast “Knuckleheads with Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles.”

Prior to entering the NBA, Mashburn was one of the top college players in the country at Kentucky. Given his talent, he was chosen to play with a select team of other college players in training against the U.S. men’s 1992 Olympic basketball team (later known as “The Dream Team”).

Arriving with his fellow select team players, Mashburn saw Larry Bird in the hotel hallway while he was walking with Chris Webber (also a member of the select team).

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Bird, according to Mashburn, didn’t bother with pleasantries.

“He looked at us and he said, ‘Get some f—— rest, it’s gonna be a long week,’ and walked off.”

Despite Bird’s warning, things started positively for Mashburn and his college teammates. As has been chronicled since then, in the first-ever scrimmage of the select team vs. the Dream Team, it was Mashburn, Webber, and the younger group who had the upper hand.

“So we get out the gates,” Mashburn recalled. “Like the first 15 minutes, we kicking they a–.”

At a certain pointed, however, Team USA coach Chuck Daly stopped the game with the select team winning, and made sure to erase the scoreboard before the media could see what had happened.

But afterward, Mashburn recalled how fellow select team member Rodney Rodgers made a terrible mistake in their moment of (secret) victory.

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“We get back to the hotel,” Mashburn continued, “Rodney Rogers says something to — it’s a group of them, it’s Larry Bird, Magic Johnson, everybody’s shooting the sh– — and Rodney Rogers said, ‘Hey Larry, you ain’t hit a jumper since ’84.'”

Unfortunately for Rogers, Bird and Johnson heard what he’d said.

The next day, the Dream Team turned the tables on the select team, and Bird responded to Rogers.

“The next day, we came in, and I’d never seen this, and this was when I was like, ‘This is a different breed,’” Mashburn recalled. “Magic Johnson fed Larry Bird the ball probably about eight times in a row down court. Larry Bird got the ball on Rodney Rogers, and every time he was about to make a move, he told him what he was going to do.”

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Bird proceeded to knock down each of his shots having explained in detail to Rogers how it would happen.

As he walked off the court to rest his back, Bird turned back to have the last word.

“Young fella, look like ’84, huh?” Bird asked Rogers.

“They kicked our a– for the rest of the week,” Mashburn added.