Larry Bird watched the first half of the Celtics and Pacers from his exclusive seat at Conseco Arena, his expression as flat as ever, after all, for a man who can handle the scene of 20,000 fans in front of the influx of fans after winning a championship, it is not a big deal to have his team behind in an ordinary regular season.

The years have left a deep mark on the former Celtic superstar, whose once fluffy, blonde hair has become a thin, slouchy yellow-gray short, and his once full, powerful cheeks have swelled from fresh apples to a well-made dough. The sexy mustache that he had in the past has long since disappeared, and he wears a brownish-gray coat with a navy blue crewneck underwear underneath, and he is no longer as chic as a player, and he is not as domineering as Jordan, or as affable as a magician, and he looks like a farmer on an Indiana corn farm.

If there's one thing that hasn't changed much from the past, it's Bird's expression when he drags his cheeks to watch the game, always like a good student who listens attentively, for fear of missing a single detail in class.

But that's just the appearance, Bird has never been a person who is fully focused off the court, he only puts his heart and soul into it when he is on the court, and once he sits on the bench, his mind is wild, of course, these thoughts are related to basketball, which is why in that group of basketball superstars who want to be coaches, Larry Bird can be successful and can get the best coach.

He spent half of his time tonight thinking about how to move Isiah Thomas out of the Pacers' head coach position. Although Thomas now seems to be leading the team to a good record, Bird has no idea that he can lead the Pacers to success in the playoffs, as early as two and a half years ago he opposed Thomas as the Pacers coach, but the owner's intentions made him unable to disobey.

Two and a half seasons down. The team continued to improve in the regular season, but Bird believes that it is the credit of the team's operation, after all, the signing of O'Neal Jr., the acquisition of Brad Miller and Ron Artest, but it has nothing to do with Thomas, the only thing that has to do is that he has cultivated O'Neal Jr. and promoted his growth.

But this was not enough in Bird's view. He is tired of Thomas's trademark smile and complex and changeable tactical routines, which he doesn't like at all, allowing players to fit into various tactics like chess pieces, but neglecting to develop players' technical and tactical abilities. And Thomas's tactics are so reliant on low-post offense that many times those complicated runs turn into a simple turnaround jumper, which is what makes Bird the most unbearable.

He misses the enthusiasm with which the Pacers threw themselves into tactical training when he was coaching, with Rick Carlisle and Dick Hart being his right-hand men. They have a single-minded and stable tactical routine. At the same time, the experience and intelligence of the players allows them to bring enough variation on the field.

Now, Hart is sitting in the Celtics' dugout playing for his former club, a sight that is commonplace in the NBA, where once-close teammates can go toe-to-toe on the court, and what else is impossible. However, he was surprised that during a timeout, he actually saw the head coach of the Celtics hand over the tactical board to Hart. Let Hart lay out the tactics for the players while the manager himself stands on the sidelines and watches.

This allowed Bird to see some of his own shadows. When he was with the Pacers, he liked to hand over the tactical instructions to the assistant coach if the opponent could do better than him in some details. Bird, who has been in the league for so many years, knows that the head coach who gives the tactical arrangement to the assistant coach like this, except for him Big Bird Bird, does not seem to have a second one, if any. That is, this Celtic "wild boy".

While well-meaning fans refer to Leon as "Scarface", Bird likes to call him "Wild Boy" because he is a guy who has been picked up from a labor camp by Auerbach and whitewashed for two years. He was pushed to the position of head coach.

Bird admits that he has some jealousy of this guy in his heart, he has dedicated his entire career to the Celtics, brought incomparable glory, but in the end he was hung like a pennant on the façade to blow a cold wind, never entered the core of the Celtics, never had the opportunity to touch the head coach's throne, and now he is in the hands of such a guy.

And then he seems to be doing a decent job, he is said to be a data expert, he has a good way of analysing players' game data, he has a good memory, he knows a lot of tactics. But what Bird hates most is coaches like this, a group of data experts who have emerged in recent years, with the help of computers and videotapes, trying to deconstruct the game of basketball with sets of numbers without having played a single game.

In Bird's view, these people are a bunch of "whimsical, pen-and-paper dwarfs", so Fox Leon's success can only be temporary and limited, just like Thomas, who can only win part of the game in a game that lacks specificity in the regular season, relying on the talent and on-court play of the players, and when it comes to the playoffs, he will only be beaten to the bone.

Thinking of this, Bird took his mind back and started thinking about how to get Thomas away again and replace him with his crush Rick Carlisle, who is now thriving in the Pistons. It's ironic that a former Celtics general manager wants to send a former Pistons coach away and get a former Celtics coach who is now coaching with the Pistons.

"If only Isiah could get back to Detroit......" At the start of the second half, Bird thought to himself, how much he wished Thomas could go back to the Pistons as coach and let Dumas sign his good partner back in exchange for Carlisle.

However, after the start of the second half, Bird saw something different about the Pacers, more intense physical confrontation, the breakthrough of the Celtics players at the expense of fouls, and the blocking of three-point shots, in the first few minutes of the third quarter, the Pacers actually let the Celtics shoot 1 of 6. It's just that the Pacers' own offense seems to have been disrupted, with even misses, and both sides keep hitting iron, and the scene is quite ugly.

Leon continued to stand on the sidelines and supervise the battle. He had expected that the first half relied too much on inside breakouts and three-point shooting, and in the second half he would definitely encounter resistance. Full-court pressing and expanding the defense made it difficult for Arenas, the Celtics' accelerator, to kick off.

Maybe the scene was too ugly, the NBA officials couldn't stand it, and gave an official timeout when the game went on for 4 minutes, and in these 4 minutes, the Celtics scored 3 points with one free throw, and the Pacers scored 5 points with two free throws, and the difference was only narrowed by 2 points.

"They're literally playing rugby! Do I even doubt that the ball I am holding in my hand is round? Arenas started complaining as soon as he got off the court, sitting on the bench and gulping down water. Apparently he was targeted, and before half the court had the ball, someone came to wrap it up, and it disappeared as soon as the ball came out. Arenas isn't the kind of ball-handling master who sees the whole court, and when static, his passing vision is limited to a 60-degree radius of 10 feet in front of him, and his ability to share the ball is greatly enhanced in dynamic situations.

Isiah Thomas is a super point guard by training, and he knows how to deal with a young man like Arenas. Knows how to disrupt his rhythm and his goal is achieved. Leon brought Steve Kerr on the pitch after a timeout, allowing the more experienced Kerr to sort out the team's offense.

However, Leon didn't expect that Steve Cole's appearance almost caused a super brawl.

After Kerr came on, the Pacers' enlarged bag also lost its effect. Kerr was in no hurry to push forward, and he and Pierce and Reed could easily defuse the enlargement package with a few short passes in the backcourt, and the Celtics began to try to use the one-on-one ability of Pierce and Walker to open up the situation. First, Pierce hit a jump shot after receiving the ball at 45 degrees on the right side, and then Walker took advantage of the Pacers' mistake to quickly counterattack and make a layup, and O'Neal Jr. fouled the defender and sent Walker to the free throw line.

At this time. The mood of the two sides was already a little bad, O'Neal Jr.'s foul was quite vicious, Walker fell to the ground hard, Leon couldn't remember how many times this was the Celtics player fell to the ground in the half, he couldn't help yelling at the referee, "Is this just an ordinary foul?" Is this just a common foul? ”

Immediately afterwards, the Pacers' offensive focus came to Ron Artest, he received the ball with his back at 45 degrees on the right side, Sigma stepped to the basket and crushed it, first scored a goal to cause PJ Brown to foul, and then repeated the same trick, but this time Pierce was very tight, this was not expected by Artest to fake and shake Pierce away after turning around, but Pierce did not control and pressed on Artest all of a sudden.

Artest seemed to be in control, he put his arm on Pierce to prevent him from tipping, and Pierce also patted Artest on the head, and the situation eased suddenly. As a result, at the time of the free throw, I don't know how, Reggie Miller and Steve Kerr began to argue, just when Artest hit the second free throw and pressed the score further to prepare to return to defense, Miller and Kerr were already scolding each other near the three-second zone.

"You'd better shut up, or you'll just wait for the ****......" In the face of Miller's chatter trash talk, Kerr was obviously angry, he didn't play much time in this game, but he and Miller have a long-standing feud, starting from the Kerr Bulls in the 90s, and the famous "bow moment" in the 1994 season made Miller not polite to Kerr when he met him on the court. So in just a few minutes of playing time, Miller had already spewed tons of trash talk at Kerr.

And Kerr's temper is obviously not very good tonight, the fierce confrontation and constant fouls, the noise of the fans on the spot, made every player of the Celtics tense their nerves, people became irritable and irritable, and everyone was restrained. Apparently, Miller made Kerr angry, and the little man who dared to shake his fist at Jordan in training pointed at Miller's nose and cursed.

The so-called do it if you don't agree with each other, the two didn't fight, but their arms and arms were already entangled together. The referee's whistle sounded like a siren, and this was the second time that this was the case between the two sides in this game, which put a lot of pressure on referee Villaard and others, who obviously still had problems controlling the scale at the beginning of the game.

The players on both sides gathered again, but there were still many people who persuaded them, and both sides were able to restrain their anger. But there is one person who can't be restrained, and that is Fox Leon, in his opinion, the Pacers' players are really a bit of a bully, too much, all kinds of fouls. And swearing. He made a beeline from his coaching area to the box, squeezed into the crowd and pulled Steve Kerr away, yelling at Miller, "What's-fucking-up!" (What do they want to do!) ）”

Very few coaches get involved in player conflicts, after all, coaches seem to be well-mannered and older, and they don't take the players seriously. But Leon is young among the coaches. He was so angry tonight, and he wanted to protect his players too much, just like he did against the Bucks last time, and he rushed to the front line again.

This time Miller was not Mason, his mouth stinked enough, and when he saw Leon coming forward, he opened his big mouth and shouted with an expression of no one in his eyes: "Who-are-you, tell-me-who-are-you?" I-made-my-bones-when-you-were-going-out-with-cheerleaders！ (Who are you, tell me who you are?) You were still playing with mud when Lao Tzu became famous! ”

Leon is not a man who is good at fighting back verbally. He has always been precise and economical in his use of words, and he does not like to gush on and on about meaningless things. But Miller's rhetoric angered him, he knew that he was a rookie coach in the league, a three-no coach with no background, no qualifications and no experience, and he was working hard, struggling, and changing for it. And Miller, like a wicked woman, mocked his flaws with words.

The flames of anger reached Leon's brain center. Then from the center of his brain to his fists, the calloused iron fists. After coming to this body, Leon did not pull down boxing, he often jumped rope and punched sandbags to exercise, and this body has become accustomed to the days of boxing.

Miller looked at Leon silent and did not respond, still a little proud in his heart, thinking that if he didn't have the ability, he wouldn't come to protect the players. But as soon as this thought flashed in his mind, he felt a gust of wind blowing towards his front door, and a big fist flew into view, and Miller was directly stunned and didn't move. Thankfully, the punch didn't hit him in the face. Instead, it struck down to his collarbone and chest.

He only felt a tightness in his chest, and the whole person took two steps back, the huge force made him almost unable to stand firmly, and his front chest was strong and received two punches from Leon!

Leon punched so fast that no one stopped him, and perhaps no one thought that an NBA head coach would punch an opposing player! But it all happened like this, and then everything fell into chaos, and the Pacers players all rushed up when they saw that Miller, the veteran of the team, was beaten and could still sit still.

Ron Artest rushed towards Leon, waving his right arm like a punch to Leon, but Pierce pulled Artest, and Leon couldn't care so much, and reflexively punched Artai twice, one in the neck and one in the chest, plus Pierce dragged in the back, Artest fell diagonally.

Subsequently, Leon was like a harvester with horsepower, although Kerr hugged him in the back, but he couldn't stop the Pacers players from rushing here, and Leon was coming to fight one by one, facing seven or eight arms, his straight punches were fierce, and those Pacers players couldn't get close at all! Several guys who tried to wrap their arms around Leon's neck were all covered by Leon's two hooks.

The referee was about to collapse, blowing the whistle frantically outside, and he couldn't get into the crowd at all, and the fans at the scene were also excited, and some people took advantage of the chaos to throw Coke and popcorn into the stadium.

At this time, Leon has been surrounded by PJ Brown, Dalem Porter and Wang Zhizhi, and does not let anyone approach him again, not because he is afraid that others will hurt him, but because he is afraid that he will hurt others.

Leon's originally meticulous hair was disrupted, two more blood marks on his face, his suit was torn, his tie was scattered, and one of his shoes was missing. But the Pacers' side was even worse, after Atai fell to the ground, he was pressed by Pierce and never got up, and the others were punched by each other, even if Leon's men did not hit them in the chin, or they were indeed tall and could still stand on the court soberly, but their bodies and arms were beaten painfully.

Fortunately, the Celtics players still remained calm and restrained, after all, their own coach did not suffer a loss and beat people, and they were mainly dissuaded, and in the end they did not form a big brawl, but became Leon's heads-up against the Pacers.

Finally, the scene was finally controlled, Isaiah Thomas stood on the sidelines and was dumbfounded, he had seen a big scene, but he had never seen such a scene, a coach, picked a team, looked at the pitch of chicken feathers, he could no longer smile.

Unsurprisingly, Leon was sent off the court and escorted back to the locker room by PJ and Wang Zhizhi, and when he left, he still didn't forget to yell at the Pacers' bench: "A-group-of-coward!" (A bunch of cowards!) ）”

None of the Pacers players dared to talk back for fear of being beaten.

And Bird, who was sitting in the exclusive position on the sidelines, was still motionless, but with a slight smile on his face, he looked at Leon's back as he disappeared from the passage, and shook his head lightly: "Interesting guy, interesting guy ......" (to be continued.) )