Country: USA
Genre: Biography
Pages: 290
Synopsis:
Bird told by Bird. The life of one of the best basketball players of all-time. From the cradle to the brink of retirement.
Kevin McHale can do everything except dribble the basketball. I've always told him he looks like a baby deer on ice when he dribbles.
One doesn't find the temple of Larry Bird worship easily. It is a place that requires maturity and life experience to find. I have played basketball through my childhood and teenage years and have been following the sport since the late eighties and Larry Bird was always the enemy. The über-athlete Michael Jordan was the obvious choice for worship and not long before him, the always smiling and multi-talented Magic Johnson was just easier of approach. The gaunt, rugged and pasty white Celtics made the perfect bad guys. My interest for old-time basketball got rejuvenated when I selected the infamous Bird-McHale duo for a NBA Jam season, out of pure sense of irony. But they started growing on me as the season went along and I started reading up on Larry Bird. I liked what I've read enough to pick up his official autobiography DRIVE: THE STORY OF MY LIFE.
I've read maybe twenty or thirty biographies maximum in my life and this was a very different experience. I'm not saying this in a positive way. It's hard to gauge the involvement of Bob Ryan in the book, but I can't see him being more than a ghost writer. What DRIVE sounds like is about one week worth of discussions recorded and transcribed as it is on the page. There is no thought process that went through presentation. It's cool in one way, because it's very conversational. It's unfiltered, pure access to Larry Bird, like he was discussing his life right in front of you. But the drawbacks are bigger than the perks, in this approach. Bird doesn't go into details often and conveniently leaves out aspects of his life. The suicide of his father, for example. I can understand it's a painful wound, but the point of writing your autobiography is to share that stuff, so it can reach out to people and make them see you in a new light. No mention of the legendary thrash talk either. It's very guarded throughout. Very cautious and positive. In that regards, DRIVE was a disappointing, frustrating read.
But it's not all bad. Some very interesting elements transpired from DRIVE. For example, that Larry Bird's small-town upbringing and shallow grasp of existence outside Indiana sheltered him and kept him focused on basketball. It's fascinating to read how he didn't really care about being drafted by the Celtics, because he was busy playing for Indiana State. His commitment was here and now, to his present team and he went all the way with them before turning professional. It's when he hit Boston that he discovered a whole new world, fell in love with a city, with a world so different than Indiana and became a rabid, loyal team player. Bird was less athletic than most of his all-star counterparts, but it's his focus on the game and his understanding of basketball mechanics that made him so great to watch. This dedication origins from a surprising place.
I discovered from this adversity that I loved to pass. I thought passing was it - and I still do. I like to see the gleam in my teammate's eyes as he runs back down the court after scoring off one of my passes.
When I was finally able to come back from my injury, I was making passes no one had ever seen me make before and basketball was more fun that it had ever been before. Suddenly I had a whole new way to play. It was great because when you pass the ball that way it makes your teammates happy and it also makes it much easier for you to shoot. It just gave me a whole new dimension to my game. Besides, passing is more of an art than scoring. My feeling about passing is that it doesn't matter who's doing the scoring as long as it's my team. Everything was starting to come together.
Another oddity to this book, is that the straight autobiography part ends two thirds into the book. The last hundred pages contains observations and musings about professional basketball. It's a curious choice and it's been pointed out as padding by many readers, but I liked some of it. For example, when he goes over the different basketball arenas and points whatever he likes and dislikes about them, it gives insight about what basketball players are looking into, for external factors that enhanced or handicaps their game. His musings about Michael Jordan and his revolutionary style were also very cool. A hundred page is a long time though and much of this material could've been used to flesh out the autobiographical part.
When I say it takes maturity to like Larry Bird, I mean that he's no poster boy, his game was always more efficient than flashy (inside the perimeter anyway. His three point binges were something else) and he always was the antagonizing dude on the court. But when you grow up, face life for what it is, fail and fail again, you start to root for the guy who dogs it out, rather than for the natural. Larry Bird was all grit and passion and DRIVE doesn't do him justice. It's rushed and it doesn't have much perspective at all. I don't know who's to blame for that. Did Larry really wanted to write his autobiography that bad as he wasn't even done playing yet? Or was he offered a book deal he couldn't refuse? Either way, I'm not convinced that DRIVE: THE STORY OF MY LIFE contains what you really want to know about Larry Bird. I mean c'mon. Look at the guy. There has to be more to his story.
TWO STARS