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Message: [QUOTE="ConwayGmck, post: 4009796, member: 10442"] Not only a proper comparison, but actually not true to begin with. One, Bird was not an "invite" player for the Boston Celtics, where there was a menu of choices to choose from. He was a contractually salaried player, and as long as the Celtics medical staff deemed him capable of playing, he was going to play for them. So just saying, "Larry Bird should not be on the Boston Celtics" does not work here like that...... Two, it is NOT true that Larry Bird was a "liability playing defense". The proper argument would've been that Larry Bird was a poor one-on-one defender, which would be true. But oddly enough despite that fact, Larry Bird was one of the all-time best TEAM defenders the NBA has ever seen - he was described as a basketball version of a "free safety" in football - a player that roamed the paint and around the key, effectively attacking opponents who had teammates of Bird's - like excellent shot-blockers Parrish and McHale - defending them, and therefore had their attention solely on those guys. Bird had a great sense/knack of slipping up behind those players and blocking their shots, stealing their balls, or stepping into passing lanes and intercepting passes, that by the end of his career he had quite the impressive highlight reel of defensive plays created just from that kind of team, "off-the-ball" defensive play. Finally, to add to that, Bird was an outstanding defensive rebounder his entire career, to make the whole package into something FAR removed from being "a liability playing defense". Especially early in his career before he started having back troubles, Bird was effective battling bigger, taller true centers - like Daryl Dawkins, Moses Malone, Kareen Abdul-Jabbar - for rebounds through anticipation, positioning and quicker reflexes...... If you were just talking about on-man defense, then you'd be more correct. But there is a LOT more to defense in basketball than just that.... [/QUOTE]

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