Red Auerbach's Method For Punishing Larry Bird Would Embarrass Today's NBA Players

In today's day and age, a lot of NBA players don't exactly lose sleep over missing games, but the great Larry Bird wasn't like that. In fact, former Boston Celtics president Red Auerbach once stated that the best way to punish Bird would be to tell him he couldn't play for a few games.

"If I wanted to punish him, I wouldn't fine him. I could fine him any amount and he wouldn't say anything. If I really wanted to punish him, I'd tell him he can't play the next couple of games."

A lot of current NBA players have complained about the 65-game threshold for awards, with current Celtic Jaylen Brown suggesting the minimum game requirement should be 58. The fact that they feel it's too much to ask of them to play at least 80% of the season to be eligible for awards is disappointing.

Someone like Bird wouldn't have worried about a rule like this one bit. The fewest number of games he played in a single campaign in his first nine seasons in the league was 74.

Bird played all 82 games in three seasons and it was only when he started dealing with severe heel and back injuries that he started to miss time. He even played through injuries, as he desperately wanted to be out there on the court, and you wish there were more players with that mindset in today's NBA.

Larry Bird Shared His Mentality During His Career

Bird recently sat down with Isaiah Thomas and Reggie Miller for an episode of Basketball Stories. There, he revealed what his mentality was during his career.

“The one thing I have that a lot of people don’t have — there’s a lot of players that have it — I had the ability to play every night,” Bird said. "I brought it every night. I got a good understanding that the Celtics paid me to win basketball games. It was my job to win basketball games, so every time I walked out there, I felt I had to win to make them happy. The one thing I can say in everything that I’ve done is I gave it my all. I paid the price with a lot of injuries I had, but I laid it on the line every night — practice, playing — and it made me better. Plus, I was playing against the world’s best. That’s what it’s all about.”