Larry Bird: A Basketball Legend

When I told my friends I was reviewing basketball DVDs they made a round of the usual names: Jordan, Magic Johnson, Shaq, but the one name that I had never heard before was Larry Bird. Larry Bird was possibly one of the greatest players the NBA ever saw and certainly the greatest player Boston Celtics had for a long time. You want to know how good Bird was, he is the reason why Magic Johnson never won Rookie of the Year, he took the Boston Celtics to bottom of the NBA to two years later title glory and then did it two more times in his career.

Now after watching almost sixteen hours of Michael Jordan, the fact that Bird only gets a little over an hour to tell his story makes you wonder if he was really that good. This DVD proves that you didn't need all that time to show just how good someone is and within an hour Bird proved to me why people call him one of the best.

This documentary charts Bird's life through his poor upbringing in French Lick Indiana through to college success and NBA superstardom. It also charts his friendly rivalry with Magic Johnson. His ability to play almost every single position is a sight to behold and some of the plays he is able to put together makes you wonder just how he was able to do it. One of the players commented 'Our one game plan was to get the ball to Bird'. Now, this should be a disadvantage, except when he had the ball he was so devastating with it that the other team could not compete.

The lack of extra footage hurts this DVD somewhat (as it did with the Magic Johnson DVD) as a few more highlight reels of Bird during his best games would have been a nice extra. Unfortunately all that is presented here is a little over an hour of footage of him and really there should have been more for the man the disk dubs a 'Legend'.