Who is the greatest player in the history of the Boston Celtics? That is a question that will get you a few different answers. Some will say Bill Russell; some might say 2007-08 Kevin Garnett. But the most common answer is likely Larry Bird.
The league's first superstar shooter, the Indiana farmboy with a killer instinct and the most ruthless trash talking in basketball, the player who resurrected the NBA's most successful franchise and won three MVPs and three titles in the 1980s? That is Larry Bird.
Ask Celtics fans what the single greatest team in franchise history is, and they will almost certainly say the 1986 Boston Celtics. A contender for the best team of any franchise, ever, that team featured a front line of Bird, Kevin McHale, Robert Parish and someone named Bill Walton coming off the bench. They rolled to the NBA Championship over the Houston Rockets, Bird's third title of the decade.
Yet the next year, they lost in six games to the Showtime Lakers, as they had in 1985. They barely overcame the Lakers in seven games in 1984. They went 1-2 in the 1980s in the NBA Finals against their greatest foes in the Western Conference, reigniting a rivalry from the days of Bill Russell and Jerry West.
Why didn't the greatest frontcourt in the history of basketball win more titles? Why did the Celtics overall win just three with a generational superstar like Larry Bird on the team? You can point to Magic Johnson as the reason, another generational superstar and fellow Top-10 player all-time who ran the point for the Los Angeles Lakers. You can point to Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, a top-5 player all time in the tail end of his prime during the Showtime era.
Yet the player Bird himself pointed to as the most difficult player to face, the secret weapon the Lakers had to deploy against any team but especially the Celtics, the unheralded piece of a decade-plus of Lakers success, was one Michael Cooper.
Michael Cooper stopped Bird and the Celtics
The great sports reporter and writer Jackie Macmullan wrote a book chronicling the resurgence of the NBA in the 1980s through the lense of the one rivalry that truly mattered: Larry Bird v. Magic Johnson. When the Game was Ours used countless interviews and newspaper articles to weave a wonderful tale of how two men fought one another and saved the NBA. Yet as she details in her book, it wasn't Bird and Magic defending one another, but rather it was Michael Cooper being given the mission of slowing down the Celtics' scoring machine.
Lakers head coach Pat Riley gave Cooper the task of defending Larry Bird, and he took on that mission as if his life depended on it. MacMullan writes that "Cooper watched tapes of Bird while lying in bed with his wife Wanda before he went to sleep. He watched tapes of Bird in the morning while he was brushing his teeth...even on vacation." Cooper once said, "My goal was simply to make every single thing he did more difficult." (pg 127).
Bird acknowledged Cooper's ability himself, calling him the most difficult defender he ever faced, and watching film of Cooper's defense to look for advantages (pg 128). Cooper held Bird well under his normal shooting percentages when they met in the Finals, harrying him and freeing up his teammates not to double-team, which was the usual way to slow down Larry Legend.
In fact, in that 1984 series that the Celtics ultimately won, they ran a game-ending play with a double-screen for Bird just to get Michael Cooper off of him; matched up against Magic, Bird easily rose up and drained the game-winning bucket.
Bird's teammates were good enough to win in 1984, but they lost in 1985 and in 1987, in large part because Bird's shooting percentage tanked and his assists went down -- all as a result of Michael Cooper. And Bird knew it -- when asked in '85 whether his previously injured elbow was slowing him down, Bird instead gave the credit to Cooper.
The Boston Celtics won three titles in the 1980s, an impressive mark. They should have won more. Yet it just so happened that the only player in the league who could slow down Larry Bird played for the Los Angeles Lakers. When the chips were down, Bird was merely good, not great, when facing Cooper and the Lakers. And that is why Magic has five trophies and Bird only has three.
There is more to be said on Cooper's impact on Larry Bird, but for a period dominated by titans like Kareem, Bird, Magic, McHale and Worthy, a low-usage bench wing named Michael Cooper made his mark. And Celtics fans may never get over it.