"Kentucky quit recruiting me": 3X NBA champ Larry Bird laughs off recruiting incident before landing at Indiana State
NBA legend Larry Bird opened up on a recruiting incident with Kentucky before he went to Indiana State.
It has been rumored for a while that Bird wanted to go to Kentucky, but the Wildcats weren't too interested in him. To add fuel to that fire, Larry Bird opened up on Kentucky's recruiting of him:
“Well, I wanted to go to Kentucky," Bird said. “But Kentucky quit recruiting me, so it was down to Indiana State and IU, so I went to IU."
In a reply to the post, Kentucky sports historian Oscar Combs gave some more insight into Kentucky's failed recruiting of the three-time NBA champion Larry Bird:
“It’s a long, somewhat complicated conversation and one with disagreeable takes,” Combs wrote of the Bird recruitment.
"One UK official told me UK’s rigid academic criteria for out-of-state students prevented UK from pursuing him, but would have been accepted had he lived in Ky,” claims Combs. However, he notes that “others say that wasn’t the case.”
After the failed recruitment of Bird, the basketball legend ended up going to Indiana State.
Larry Bird's basketball career
Bird ended up playing college basketball at Indiana State and led the Sycamores to their first NCAA tournament appearance with a 33–0 record in 1979.
That season, Bird helped Indiana State make the national championship game, but the Sycamores lost 75–64 to Michigan State despite Bird going for 7-for-21 on shooting.
Bird played three seasons at Indiana State and averaged 30.3 PPG, 13.3 PPG, and 4.6 assists over 94 games, shooting 53.3%. In the NBA, Larry Bird was drafted sixth overall the year before but opted to return to Indiana State for the 1979 season.
He played his entire 13-year NBA career with the Boston Celtics and helped them win three championships. Bird was a focal point on offense in all three seasons and ended his career averaging 24.3 PPG, 10.0 rebounds, and 6.3 assists.
Since retiring in 1992, the Celtics retired his jersey number, and Bird was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1998. Bird is now a consultant for the Indiana Pacers.