Boston without Bird.
The unthinkable has finally happened. Boston`s superstar has benched himself permanently for health reasons. And as the team he led for more than a decade struggles to fill the void, the city his name has been linked with around the world does not seem the same.
Nearly 20 years after the battle over school desegregation through busing split this city into armed camps and media coverage made it a household synonym for racial polarity, the city and its most successful team are still trying to overcome cries of racism and questions of race.
Must the Celtics, who host the Bulls here Wednesday night, have a white star to placate the nearly all-white season-ticket-holder base? Will Boston support a nearly all-black team? Can a black athlete become a star of Bird`s magnitude in today`s Boston? Did Bird receive excessive praise because of his race? Does race still really matter?
”It`s largely in the minds of (outsiders) that we are any more or any less racist (than anywhere else),” says Richard Lapchick, director of the Center for the Study of Sport in Society at Boston`s Northeastern University. ”There`s definitely a higher level of race consciousness here than in other places with the possible exception of Los Angeles after the King verdict,” Lapchick said. ”The busing thing is a visual image that`s very alive here. The house-to-house searches after the Carol Stuart murder; the anger and horror at the discovery that this guy (her husband, Charles) had killed his own wife and the police had once again put a community through the humility and degradation of these unbridled searches.”
Lapchick, who is white, tells of a black colleague, a former NFL player, who recently moved out of Boston to raise his children in an area with less prejudice. The friend called from his new home in Los Angeles to admit that he had already been to his children`s school because they were being taunted about their race.
”Show me a community that does not have racism,” says a frustrated Arthur Jones, press secretary to Mayor Raymond Flynn. ”I`ve been in this town now for 23 years and I`ve watched talented black people come through and say, `I`m out of here.` ” But Jones, who is black, adds: ”It`s not open season on blacks around here. It isn`t.”
Celtics player Reggie Lewis, Bird`s successor as team captain, says that other black players around the NBA often ask, ”How can you play there?” He tells them he experienced more prejudice growing up in Baltimore.
A tough idea worked
As a rookie with the Celtics, Lewis took part in one of the most ambitious racial and economic experiments in the city`s history when he moved into Harbor Point, a Cabrini-Green-like housing development that has been transformed into an integrated mixed-income community. His willingness to live there sent signals to blacks and whites.
”Here was this black basketball star bringing white people to a predominantly black neighborhood, which is kind of a reversal of what you normally think of,” explains Dave Hanifin, an attorney with the state ethics commission and a resident of Harbor Point. ”It kind of boggles the mind. But it worked.”
Lewis recently left Harbor Point for a million-dollar house in the mostly white suburb of Dedham, a not-unexpected move for someone with a multimillion- dollar salary. But his efforts at Harbor Point and elsewhere in Boston have earned him a place as a member of the community.
”Larry Bird was important to the Celtics. The Celtics are important to Boston, but Larry Bird is not Boston,” says Harry Bryan, a Boston electric switch salesman who followed Lewis to Harbor Point. ”He was always loved as a basketball player, not as a member of the community.”
Will Lewis be a hero?
The popular and talented Lewis, who was a standout at Northeastern, is following Bird as captain. Can he follow him as hero?
Robert Parish, the team`s stoic longtime star center but among those overshadowed by Bird, doubts the town will let Lewis rise that far. ”This is a white town and they like white heroes,” says Parish, who is black. He insists that Bill Russell, the fabled Celtic center and former coach, ”was the only one who achieved that magnitude.”
Teammate Kevin McHale, the third member of the Celtics` ”Holy Trinity”
with Bird and Parish, sees no obstacles in Lewis` way.
”It`s not a white-black thing. Then again you`re getting the perspective of a white guy who`s had a lot of success and really enjoys living and playing in Boston. You`d probably get a better perspective if you talk to some of the black players.”
McHale continues with a comment others also make: ”If Magic Johnson would have come here, he would have been as big as Larry. If Larry would have gone to L.A., he would have been as big as Magic. Your play transcends color, and that`s the way it should be.”
But fan Dave Hanifan disagrees. ”I just think of Boston at that time as not being prepared for a black hero,” says Hanifan, who is white.
Bird would have stood out anywhere as a great white player in a sport increasingly dominated by blacks. In Boston, he became part of a tradition of great white players, including Bob Cousy, John Havlicek, and Dave Cowens, though Cousy himself believes that Bird`s play alone, not his race, earned him a spot in the sports pantheon.
Bird made it on merit
”I think he was obviously an incredible superstar. However, I think that the fact that he was white-and I don`t mean racism was involved, there are more white Celtics fans than black Celtics fans-certainly made it easier to support a white superstar,” says Rich Lapchick. ”He didn`t have to be created. He was the real McCoy, whereas I think other teams, not just in Boston, have traded for white players so they could be that superstar draw in the white community.”
No one denies racism exists in Boston and its suburbs. Some high-profile incidents have involved even well-known athletes.
Celtics guard Dee Brown was mistakenly identified as a bank robber in the overwhelmingly white suburb of Wellesley. Mel Hall, a black former Cub who has most recently played for the New York Yankees, was detained at Logan Field because he ”fit” the description of a drug runner.
The Boston Red Sox, once notorious for poor race relations, were the last major-league team to integrate. These days, they claim to be trying to turn that image around.
Many within the Celtics organization bristle at any mention of race. They point out-rightly-that the Celtics were the first pro basketball team to draft a black player (Chuck Cooper in 1950); the first major pro sports team to appoint a black head coach (Russell in 1966); and the first pro baseketball team to have five blacks on the floor at the same time (1964).
True. But for all that forward thinking, the Celtics, and the city, have never managed to escape the perception of racism.
New York Times sportswriters Harvey Araton and Filip Bondy wrote a book about it, ”The Selling of the Green.” Mention it, as Sports Illustrated reporter Leigh Montville recently did to legendary Celtics president Red Auerbach, and hackles rise.
”I didn`t read it,” Auerbach told Montville. ”I won`t read it. People have told me about parts of it. I don`t even want to talk about what those guys said about us, it`s so ridiculous. It`s just an extreme way to sell a book. Like a supermarket tabloid. We don`t look at the skin. I don`t care if we have 10 blacks or 10 whites. If that`s what it takes to win, then that`s what we`re going to do.”
”I always resist the strong local and national belief that the Celtics have a racist bent in their hierarchy,” says Lapchick, who doesn`t pull punches when racism is involved. ”My feeling has always been that the number of white players isn`t as important as the fact that they were the first with a black head coach.”
Crowds overwhelmingly white
Despite the scoreboard graphic that shows white and black hands clapping together, the Celtics crowd in perpetually sold-out Boston Garden is overwhelmingly white. The number of blacks in the stands at Celtics games seems to nearly equal the number on the floor.
”Oh, you noticed?” Robert Parish asks a visitor with more than a touch of sarcasm. ”That`s the first thing I noticed when I first came here.”
The crowd is hardly a barometer of the team`s popularity with various ethnic groups today. The young Larry Bird, combined with a championship in his second year, 1981, after several rotten years for the team, brought new yuppie fans into the Garden, and it has been sold out ever since.
Capacity is 14,890; an estimated 12,500 season tickets were sold this year at an average of $1,260 for 38 home games. Anyone who wants to attend a Celtics game, or any NBA game for that matter, must ante up at least $50 a person when tickets, transportation and refreshments are thrown in. Availability and economics keep black attendance to a minimum.
Even when the new $160 million, 20,000-seat Boston Garden opens in a few years, few of the new seats will be in the ”affordable” price range.
But acceptance of the Celtics in the black community may be growing.
When Reggie Lewis first came to Boston, the Celtics green was not a popular color with black children because, among other reasons, they associated green and the Irish with busing problems and, in any case, children tend to choose role models who look like them. During one playoff series with the Los Angeles Lakers, blacks interviewed by one local newspaper said they were rooting for the Lakers, not the home team, and most of the children wanted to be Magic Johnson, not Larry Bird.
”I think now kids have changed. There`s more and more green,” Lewis says. And he is starting to see more blacks at promotional events for the team. ”You feel good that it`s not any one race. It`s everyone.”
Bird`s best legacy could be to have been the last great Boston athlete whose race drew as much attention as his talent.
