Sports Illustrated replicates 1977 Larry Bird cover with Creighton star Doug McDermott
Creighton All-American Doug McDermott might not go on to become one of the 50 greatest players in NBA history, but he's certainly had an amazing college career.
Sports Illustrated recently decided McDermott was worthy of comparison to Larry Bird, who led Indiana State to the national title game in 1979. Bird was featured on a 1977 SI cover wearing his No. 33 jersey with two Sycamores cheerleaders. McDermott is in his No. 3 Creighton uniform in a recreation of that Bird cover this week.
McDermott recently climbed to No. 7 on the NCAA's career scoring list and is one of only eight players in history to score more than 3,000 points in a career. He passed Larry Bird's 2,851 career points back in February.
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McDermott is a big fan of Bird and often watches a Youtube clip of Bird before games as reported in this Sports Illustrated article. McDermott also attended Bird's jersey retirement ceremony 10 years ago at Indiana State. His dad just happened to be coaching Northern Iowa against the Sycamores that day.
While the comparison to Bird is a natural one to make, considering they both played at Missouri Valley Conference schools (though Creighton is now in the Big East) and their similarities in parts of the game, McDermott is no Bird. He has scored 774 of his points behind the 3-point line, which didn't exist when Bird played for the Sycamores.
Bird also averaged double-digit rebounding totals in each of his three seasons and more than four assists per game. McDermott has never averaged more than 8.2 rebounds over the course of a season and his career high of 57 assists in a season (2012-13) isn't even half of the lowest assist total Bird produced in his three seasons in college.
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is the assistant editor of The Dagger on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at kyle.ringo@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KyleRingo
