INDIANAPOLIS — The three Indiana basketball legends took the floor together before the start of the NBA All-Star Game on Sunday, the perfect trio to open Indiana’s spot on one of basketball’s biggest stages.
Oscar Robertson on the left. Reggie Miller in the middle. Larry Bird to the right.
Miller, the loquacious, personable color commentator for TNT, has become one of the voices of the NBA, as recognizable in public as almost any former star.
But Robertson, 85, and Bird, 67, are not always as easy to find as Miller, even though their legacies loom large over the sport, two of the greatest players to ever play the game.
For Robertson and Bird, All-Star Weekend was a chance to connect with today’s generation in touching, public displays that showed the reverence the NBA’s current stars have for the two Indiana legends.
Robertson, 85, remains involved. Five and a half hours before he took the floor with Miller and Bird, Robertson was one of the chief attractions in the NBA Crossover at the Indiana Convention Center, telling stories from his career and offering his thoughts on the current game in an hour-long chat that drew a full room of fans.
After he took the floor, though, there was a touching moment when Lakers star LeBron James, playing in his 20th All-Star and openly contemplating the end of his career, stepped forward to embrace Robertson.
Obviously, if anybody knows my history, they know how much I admire Big O, not only for what he contributed to the game, but also what he stood for off the floor as well,” James said. “We’ve always had a really cool relationship, and every time I get an opportunity to see him, we just pick it back up where we left off.”
Robertson reciprocates James’ feeling; the Royals and Bucks legend told The Athletic this week that James is his favorite player.
The Big O has been a central figure in Indiana’s first All-Star Weekend since 1985.
Earlier this week, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced that the league has commissioned a statue of Robertson that will be placed at Crispus Attucks High, unveiled in 2025, to commemorate Robertson leading Crispus Attucks to the first state championship in the nation’s history won by an all-Black team.
To see him tonight was a treat for me,” James said. “I didn’t expect to see him. I didn’t know he was going to be here.”
Bird, 67, obviously holds a special place in the game’s history.
But he has kept to himself since stepping down as the Pacers’ president of basketball operations in 2017, to the point that the two Celtics stars, Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, in Sunday night’s game had not met him.
He came in and said some words to us as a group,” Brown said. “He kind of, like, said hello to everybody. We didn’t get a chance to really communicate or talk, but it was great, that was my first time ever seeing him up close and personal. I haven’t seen him around Boston or anything.”
Tatum, the Celtics’ No. 1 player now, made sure the locker room interaction with Bird, Julius Erving and Adam Silver wasn’t the only chance he got to meet Bird.
“I turned around and he was gone,” Tatum said of the locker-room interaction. “I remember, I was standing there like: ‘I’ve never met Larry Bird. I’ve never been in the same room with him. As crazy as it sounds, it’s never worked out.”
Tatum wasn’t about to let the moment pass.
A Celtics public relations staffer pointed out Bird during the game, and Tatum made his way over to Bird.
I got a chance to go meet him and tell him how much of an honor it was to meet him. He told me he was looking forward to meeting me,” Tatum said. “So that was crazy to hear him say that. He’s a lot taller than I thought he was, but obviously what he means to the game, what he means to the city of Boston and the Celtics, he’s the ultimate Celtic.”