Larry Bird wanted to play for Kentucky basketball but 'Kentucky quit recruiting me'

Basketball hall of famer and Boston Celtics great Larry Bird wanted to play for Kentucky basketball.

The feeling just wasn't mutual between Bird and Kentucky coach Joe B. Hall.

Speaking to Isiah Thomas and Reggie Miller on "NBA on TNT" before the 2024 NBA All-Star Game in Indianapolis on Sunday, Bird said he wanted to attend Kentucky and play for Hall before ultimately choosing Indiana.

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"Well, I wanted to go to Kentucky, but Kentucky quit recruiting me," Bird said. "So it was down to Indiana State and IU so I went to IU."

Bird didn't last long in Bloomington, as he left for Indiana State a few weeks into his freshman year. Thomas, who played for the Hoosiers from 1979-81, told Bird and Miller that then-Indiana junior guard Quinn Buckner "felt bad" that he wasn't there to help Bird during those initial few weeks in college. Buckner was playing in a basketball tournament, according to Bird.

Thomas joked that the basketball gods would not have allowed Bird to play for legendary Indiana coach Bob Knight, as the Hoosiers already were stacked with talent. However, according to Bird, he left Indiana and returned home for financial reasons.

"I just couldn't do it," Bird said. "I wasn't homesick or I didn't like the coach. One thing about me is that the coach coaches and the players play. Whatever they tell you, you have to do. You may not like it but you go to do it. ... That's their expertise. I don't think Coach Knight and I would have had a problem because I never had a problem with my coach."

He added: "When I got to Indiana State, they were talking about me going to junior college and I went, 'What? I am not going to no junior college.' So I sort of played a role and they got real serious so I said, 'Look I'm not doing that. I got another place I can go. I had other colleges after me, but I wasn't letting them recruit me because I wanted to go to Indiana State then.

"They came and watched me play in the summer. We played the Indiana high school all-star team and I worked all day, put up pay all day and went up there and had a monster game. And all of a sudden, they didn't talk about going to junior college."

Why did Kentucky stop recruiting Larry Bird?

Bird, in a March 26, 1979, excerpt published in the St. Petersburg Times, said Hall and Kentucky stopped recruiting him because he was "too slow."

"Coach Joe Hall of Kentucky came to see me but told me I was too slow," Bird told the newspaper. "He had a lot of great players, proved by Kentucky winning the national championship last year. But I never thought I was too slow. Maybe Coach Hall doesn't think so now."

Birds' comments can't help but make one wonder what would have happened if he did end up in Kentucky. For starters, Bird would have been a freshman on the 1975-76 team that fell to UCLA in the national championship game. He then would have been on the Wildcats' 1978 national championship team alongside NBA players like Jack Givens, Rick Robey and Kyle Macy.

Larry Bird college stats

Bird led Indiana State to a national championship game of its own in 1979 but lost to Magic Johnson and Michigan State. The three-time NBA champion averaged 30.3 points, 13.3 rebounds and 4.6 assists in three seasons with the Sycamores before being drafted by the Celtics in the 1978 NBA Draft with the sixth overall pick.

This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Kentucky 'quit recruiting' Larry Bird, NBA basketball legend says