Larry Bird Watch

Shank has resumed following the Boston Celtics this winter - it's just not the current Boston Celtics:

Hop into the way back machine to a simpler time . . . a time when a team won a championship on Tuesday night, then flew to the White House Wednesday morning . . . a time when three star players didn’t make the trip to Pennsylvania Avenue, and hardly anybody noticed.

This happened to your Boston Celtics in the middle of a scalding June in 1984 when Larry Bird was king, Ronald Reagan was president, the Celtics were champions, and a trip to the White House was No Big Deal.

I was there. And in today’s 24/7 culture of social media, hot takes, and political polarization, it’s kind of refreshing to look back at a time when Red’s cigar was just a cigar, and nobody really cared that Bird, Robert Parish, and Cedric Maxwell skipped the trip to the White House.

That's because it wasn't due to political theater:

“Apparently the invitation (to the White House - ed.) had been made a day or two earlier to the Lakers that if they won they’d be going to the White House, but nobody bothered to mention it to us,’’ recalled Volk. “I scrambled to get flights [Eastern Airlines, flight 375] and we prepared a memo that we hoped to use if we won.’’