Larry Bird was different; he needed a place to settle down, a quieter environment to sit and discuss matters with his two assistant coaches.
After all, this was the first time in his career as a head coach, and it felt quite different from playing basketball.
Rick Carlisle tried to teach Bird in the office how to draw tactical diagrams, using circles, crosses, dashed lines, and solid lines to represent players’ movements and passes on the court.
Bird decided to give up on this project after learning about it for a day; he was really not good at drawing and thought it was foolish to have players play based on diagrams.
"Rick, in the future, I’ll leave the drawing work to you. I’ll explain a tactic, and you can present it to the players."
"But... that’s the head coach’s job..."
"True, but no one says the head coach has to do the drawing, right? So it’s fine for you to draw, isn’t it?"
Thus, Rick Carlisle had no choice but to accept Bird’s appointment, and in future games, the Trail Blazers’ tactical diagrams would be drawn by him.
Bird also learned from Dick Hart how to organize player training, especially defensive training, which is very tedious and boring.
Some players, especially young teams, might resist defensive training, and poor training quality can directly affect team performance.
Hart had a wealth of experience; in his youth, like Jack Ramsay, he served as a Marine.
Later, he coached at the University of Oregon, where he became known for intensive defense, with Stu Jackson and Earl Kent among his disciples.
In 1982, he joined the NBA, working for four years as an assistant coach for the Detroit Pistons, helping Chuck Daly build a defense, the future Bad Boys’ defense foundation was set by him.
Afterwards, he worked for the Pacers and the Hornets and was invited by Pat Riley to the Miami Heat in 1991 to develop a tough defensive system for the Heat.
By 1994, the Trail Blazers finally poached him from the Heat and invited him back to Oregon as their defensive coach.
By 1996, Hart had already worked as a coach for 31 years, and his experience in training players in defense was extremely abundant.
After listening to Hart’s three-day-long training experiences, Bird waved his hand and said, "I’ll leave the defensive training work to you in the future!"
Hart said, "But... I’m here to assist you..."
"That’s right, assist me. I’m giving you the work you’re good at."
"What about you?"
"I’ll supervise from the side."
"..."
Rick Carlisle and Dick Hart quickly realized that this head coach really treated the two assistants like workhorses.
The two of them discussed work content in the office every day, prepared player information cards, devised training camp plans, analyzed new season league rules, and built tactical frameworks.
Larry Spoelstra’s son, Little Spoelstra, was also invited by Bird to the office to work on video editing and compiling, collecting and processing player footage.
Bird placed great importance on Little Spoelstra’s work, requiring him to conduct the most detailed video analysis, especially summarizing and analyzing players’ hotspot attack areas and comfortable shooting positions.
The workload was substantial, but Little Spoelstra had done this kind of work for the Trail Blazers for free while in college, and now he was even more passionate about the analysis work.
And Bird? Most of his time was spent sitting at the desk drinking tea, reading newspapers, occasionally venting with everyone about how young people’s salaries were so high these days and how poorly they played.
He seemed like someone who handed off all responsibilities, delegating tasks to those beneath him, without bothering to think too deeply himself.
However, Larry Bird was evidently not a puppet sitting idly; in fact, he contemplated the team’s overarching issues every day.
He kept a close watch on Ah Gan’s movements, maintaining a weekly contact frequency with Ah Gan to understand his recovery status.
He also closely followed the situations of Kobe Bryant and Jermaine O’Neal, these two young high school players.
He searched through countless past reports and magazine articles about the two, gaining an initial understanding of their backgrounds and capabilities.
During his time in Portland, he dined individually with every player on the Trail Blazers roster, from veterans like Porter, to rising strengths like PJ Brown, players like Riddle who hadn’t been with the team for long, local Oregon players like AC Green, to volatile post-championship fellows like Van Exel...
Bird clearly understood that what ultimately decided a team’s success or failure was not the tactics, data, or efficiency on paper, but each living person.
A team of 12-15 players would only earn the right to succeed if each found their role and united tightly together.
The most critical task of a head coach was to mold these 12-15 individuals, understand them, assist them, and guide them into forming a unified front.
During his playing days, Bird didn’t need to think so much; he just had to do his job well, and sometimes he even played tricks on the coach.
Once becoming a head coach, his position shifted and so did Bird’s mindset.
Bird’s basketball career involved several coaches during high school, college, and the Celtics, each coach with different styles left different impacts on Bird.
The most influential was Bill Fitch, a strict, foul-mouthed old man.