Both Rick and I felt we couldn’t wait. We were going to have a new coaching staff and we needed to get going. Rick said he knew the perfect guy for the job: his fellow assistant in Portland, Dick Harter. I didn’t know Dick Harter at all. I had heard of him, because he had been around a long time, and he was the head coach of the Charlotte Hornets when I was a player, so I started doing a little checking on him. Everybody agreed Harter was an excellent coach who knew the game, but there was talk that some of the negative experiences he had had in recent years had soured him.
All I know is I talked to Dick for five minutes and it was obvious to me he loved basketball. His defensive philosophy sounded like exactly what I had in mind, and Rick assured me he was the kind of person I would really grow to appreciate. He was right. I learned so much from Dick and Rick in that first season. We could never have made it to the Eastern Conference Finals without their input and their guidance. When I won the Coach of the Year award, I felt like giving Dick and Rick the trophy instead. They deserved it a lot more than I did.
When I settled on a staff of Rick Carlisle and Dick Harter, I knew that would cause people to talk, because I hadn’t hired a minority. I wanted to make sure this wasn’t going to become an issue, so I called up two of my players, Mark Jackson and Reggie Miller, who are black, and asked them if they minded that I had hired two white coaches. I explained to them that I didn’t care what color they were, I felt they were the best two people to help us win. Both Reggie and Mark said they were fine with it, and that’s all I needed to hear. I didn’t care what anyone else thought, as long as everyone on the Indiana Pacers was thinking the same way.
To me, coaching is a “we” thing. It shouldn’t be the head coach running the whole show himself. Rick and Dick and I split up responsibilities, and we all did what we were supposed to be doing, and it worked. If some people don’t like it, too bad. All I know is that one of Dick’s friends told me our first season together in Indiana was the most fun Dick had in over forty years of coaching. That made me feel great, because Dick helped me so much.
Looking back, Dick Harter is one of the best things that happened to me in my first season. I absolutely love being around him. He’s not going to change for anybody. When we’re at some league event, he doesn’t want to go over and schmooze with all the other coaches. Everybody in this league is trying to set themselves up for their next job—everybody but Dick. He’s too honest for all that. We were at the Chicago predraft camp in June of 1998, just after we had lost to the Bulls in seven games in the Eastern Conference Finals. Everybody was gossiping and whispering in the stands. Dick turned to me and said, “C’mon, let’s get out of here so we don’t have to go out there and shake hands and kiss everyone’s butt.”
That’s my kind of guy.
On Private Matters
B
efore I took the Pacers job, I felt there was one thing I needed to share with Donnie, and that was that I had been diagnosed with a heart condition. It wasn’t anything life-threatening, but I was on medication for it, and I thought I should tell him about it before we got too far along.
We were driving around, killing some time before we went to a restaurant where we had planned to eat. I explained to Donnie that I had an arrhythmia, which caused my heart to kick out of rhythm once in a while. He listened closely, but I could tell he wasn’t too concerned. I wasn’t either. There was no reason to be. We thought we were going to have a private meeting at this restaurant, but as soon as we were done eating and had walked out the door, there was a television crew there waiting for us, shining lights in our faces. So much for privacy. I’m just glad they couldn’t hear our conversation, because the last thing I wanted was for the media to start speculating about my health.
I always knew there was something funny about my heart. Back when I was playing for the Celtics, I’d have these episodes. They would only happen once a summer, usually after I had just finished working out really hard, and I’d think to myself, “Oh boy, you overdid it that time.” All of a sudden I’d get this rush of feeling really tired, and I’d start feeling my heart jumping around. I never went to the doctor for it. I just thought I was dehydrated, or I had been going too hard, with all the workouts and traveling and everything else I was doing. If I couldn’t make it stop, then I might have been more concerned, but I’d walk a hundred yards, then stand and rest. I never quite understood what it was, but I always knew I’d better lie down. I’d close my eyes and take a nap for three or four hours, and I’d wake up and feel fine. It wasn’t that unusual for me to take a big, long nap like that. So I would forget all about it, until it happened again the next summer.
After I retired and started working for the Celtics in their front office, it was happening more frequently. I remember it happened once when I was down in North Carolina with our team during training camp. My heart kicked out of rhythm, but it wasn’t like before. For one thing, I hadn’t just worked out for two or three hours. I mentioned something to the team doctor, Arnie Scheller, and he suggested I go to Boston and get checked out. When I got back to Boston I mentioned it to Dan Dyrek too. I told him that most of the time it wasn’t a problem, but once in a while my heart felt like it was racing out of control. I wasn’t too pleased with myself at that point. Dan looked at me kind of funny and said, “I’m making a call and having you go see someone right now. You know, Larry, this isn’t something to fool around with.”
By then, Arnie had already arranged for me to see this specialist over at New England Baptist Hospital. The doctor checked my heart, but at that time I was in normal rhythm. He said, “Your heart is great. Everything seems fine,” so I said, “Well, it is now, but every once in a while it starts going crazy on me.” So that’s when they started checking me out. They had me do a standard stress test, and they did an EKG. They had me put this little computer chip on my chest so that anytime my heart kicked out of rhythm they could pick up the patterns of my heartbeat. I got a doctor in Naples to check me out too, since I was still spending a lot of time there.
They told me I had an arrhythmia—something called atrial fibrillation—which means the arrhythmia occurs sporadically instead of consistently. Basically, when my heart starts fibrillating, or twitching uncontrollably, the blood flow to my body is affected, and it makes me weak, tired, and lightheaded. There’s another kind of condition called ventrical fibrillation, which is a lot more serious and can cause a catastrophic episode within a matter of minutes, or even seconds. I’m lucky not to have to deal with that.
Anyhow, one of the things all the doctors told me was that I needed to cut back on my lifestyle a little bit. I have to do everything in moderation now. I have to watch my diet, how much I exercise, and tone down my alcohol consumption. I also have to make sure I take my medicine regularly.
I’ve had this for so long now that I can almost predict when it’s going to go out. I know when it’s happening in a second. I also know it eventually goes away. I remember there was one time it went out on me in Naples, and it was going really bad for some reason. I was real short of breath, and I felt like I needed to see my doctor. I called him, and he told me he wasn’t going to be around, but there would be another guy there to take a look at me. So I went in to see this other doctor, and he checked my heartbeat and said, “We’re going to admit you.” I’m thinking, “Hmmm.” Because that wasn’t ever necessary before. But this guy was just covering himself. I don’t think he wanted to be the guy that let Larry Bird go home with his heart going crazy. Meanwhile, all I wanted to do was go to bed. So I go down to talk to some more doctors, and they all want to keep me overnight. I’m saying, “Look, this has happened a number of times. I just need to go home and get some rest.” Finally, they let me go. The only thing they did was put an IV in me and put me on a heart monitor. They thought this thing might be flashing in and out all the time, but I knew better. I told them, “Trust me. I know when it happens, and it’s not going on all the time.”
There was a period of time when I was only having a few episodes here and there. But when I started talking to the Pacers in the spring of 1997 about coaching, my heart kicked out of rhythm again, only this time it was kicking in and out for almost three months. I kept trying to work out, but I couldn’t do it. After I tried any kind of exercise, I would walk ten feet to the bathroom and my heart felt like it was jumping out of my chest. I got a little scared, because it didn’t seem like it was going away. I went to Donnie Walsh and told him about it, and he got me an appointment with the team cardiologist, Dr. King Yee.
I went to Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis and told them what would happen to my heart, but it never seemed to happen when I was around their doctors. Finally they put me on this treadmill, and I was working real hard, sweating like crazy and feeling about ready to die, when all of a sudden it kicked out again. That’s when they were able to monitor the arrhythmia and start me on medication that was specific to the kind of problem I had.
I was on the medication for probably three weeks. Dr. Yee would continue to put me on the treadmill, to see if the medication would hold up under stressful situations. But even with the medicine, my heart was still knocking out of rhythm. At that point I was thinking to myself, “God, this is getting bad. It’s been too long.” For the first time, I was really getting concerned. Dr. Yee said my heart needed to be jolted back into its normal rhythm, so he decided to give me an electric shock treatment.
It sounds a lot worse than it actually is. In fact, it’s a pretty common procedure for restoring a normal heartbeat. I don’t even remember it happening, because they sedated me, then put me on a table and administered a little current of electricity across my chest with defibrillator paddles, just like the kind you see on any medical show on television. The electrical current jump-starts the heart back to its normal rhythm. I didn’t feel a thing. They got me up, I left the hospital, I slept all the way to French Lick, and I was fine again.
Before I left, Dr. Yee stressed how important it was to take my medication. I don’t really like to take medicine, and I knew I should have been more careful about it, but sometimes I’d forget. A couple of things Dr. Yee warned me about were to be careful around the stress of really hot weather, like we get in Naples sometimes, and to be leery about high altitudes, where there is less oxygen. Sure enough, on one of our early road trips to Denver my heart went out. It was the first time our trainer, David Craig, had to deal with it, so he was a little frantic. He called Dr. Yee back in Indianapolis. I admitted to him I had forgotten my medicine, and he arranged for David to get me some more. After that, Dr. Yee decided I needed a watchdog. From that day on, it was David Craig’s job to make sure I was taking my medicine when I was supposed to be taking it. Like Dr. Yee told me, “You know, Larry, you’re not the most compliant guy in the world.” I got the message. After that, I made sure I took my medicine when I was supposed to take it.
Even so, I didn’t want to make a big deal of it. I was the same way when I had an injury as a player. I didn’t like talking about it. The last thing I wanted was for Donnie and everyone else to be thinking about my heart. I didn’t tell the players about it. I didn’t see any reason for them to know. Of course I told Dick and Rick, but I regretted that as soon as I did it. Every time we were out after a game, one of them was saying, “Larry, are you sure you should have another beer? You know, Larry, you’ve got to watch yourself…”
For most of the season my heart condition really wasn’t an issue. But on March 17, 1998, when we were playing Chicago at home, I had it kick out on me. What happens is, my heart, when it is at rest, beats around 52 times a minute. But when it gets out of rhythm it shoots up to 102, 104 beats a minute, so it’s going twice as fast, and it feels like your heart is jumping all around, and you can’t breathe very well. It’s not like you are gasping for air, but you feel uncomfortable all the time. We’re in the middle of this big game against Chicago, and the score is really close. I really wanted us to beat them, because I had a feeling we would meet them again in the playoffs, and I wanted my guys to believe we could play with the Bulls. So I’m all caught up in the excitement of the game, and it starts happening. My heart starts fluttering, and then it starts banging around in my chest. I started sweating like crazy. I remember I kept turning to Dick and Rick and saying, “Is it really hot in here or what?” They were into the game, so I don’t think they noticed that I didn’t look so good. Dick just said, “Yeah, Larry, it is hot in here. Real hot.” The game was going on, and I don’t really remember what play was being run. I was standing on the sideline and hoping for a television time-out, because I felt like I was gonna pass out. Finally, the ref whistled time. Whenever we have a time-out, they always put a chair on the court for me so I can sit down and talk to the guys. This time I fell into that chair, because I was going out. The sweat was just pouring off me. Whenever my heart kicks out like that, I sweat really bad. I don’t know what I would have done if I had passed out on the floor. You just hope you don’t do a Jerry Reynolds and go out in front of everyone. Jerry was the coach for the Sacramento Kings, and he fainted dead away on the court once. It was a scary thing, although he’s just fine now.
By the end of the game everything had calmed down. I saw my friend Joe Kleine, who was on the Bulls. He came over to say hello, and I said to him, “Hey Joe. You got to get into these games. Tell Phil I think you should be playing more.” He just laughed. I’m sure he didn’t notice a thing.
I didn’t tell my players anything was wrong that night. I didn’t tell Dick or Rick either. The only one I really did tell was David Craig, because I had promised Donnie I would keep David informed about any problems I had. Craig told Dr. Yee, and I heard from him the next day. He reminded me that I needed to take my medicine, and that I needed to see him at least twice a year. Then he gave me a little lecture about how I had to take this condition seriously. If you let atrial fibrillation go unchecked and you don’t take your medicine, your heart won’t pump efficiently, and you could develop little blood clots, which could lead to a stroke. That’s an unlikely scenario for me, because I’m also on blood thinners. But Dr. Yee wanted me to realize the dangers. I guess Dr. Yee was trying to scare me. I’m not going to be stupid about this heart condition, but I’m not going to live my whole life in fear of this thing either. If it goes, it goes.