Larry Bird’s Greatest Shot Was The One He Didn’t Take
Forty years ago, Larry Bird passed on a chance at big-time basketball. The small-town star left Bob Knight’s IU team before a single game and returned home.
The players of Crispus Attucks High School wrote a new chapter in the book of Hoosier basketball lore—one in which underdogs could be kids from urban ghettos, could grow up shooting in alleys and parks, could be black and be a vital part of the glory of the game.
Granted permission to begin making their movie just two weeks before the season started, Cohn and Rothbart picked up and moved from where they lived in Ann Arbor to spend a year in Medora. Six hundred hours of footage later, the duo has an 82-minute film that Cohn says is all about identity.
Editor’s Note, Nov. 12, 2012: At tonight’s game, Indiana University and its men’s basketball team honor Bill Garrett, the first African-American man to play Big Ten basketball, marking the 65th anniversary of the first game in the conference in which he played. “Well, what happens now to Bill Garrett, Emerson Johnson and Marshall Murray? After […]
