Wish It Lasted Forever: Life with the Larry Bird Celtics

Description: Wish It Lasted Forever: Life with the Larry Bird Celtics Product Overview From award-winning Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, an “entertaining”
(The Wall Street Journal) and nostalgia-filled retelling of the 1980s Boston
Celtics’ glory years, which featured the sublime play of NBA legend Larry
Bird. Today the NBA is a vast global franchise—a billion-dollar industry seen
by millions of fans in the United States and abroad. But it wasn’t always this
successful. Before primetime ESPN coverage, lucrative branding deals like Air
Jordans, and $40 million annual player salaries, there was the NBA of the
1970s and 1980s—when basketball was still an up-and-coming sport featuring old
school beat reporters and players who wore Converse All-Stars. Enter Dan
Shaughnessy, then the beat reporter for The Boston Globe who covered the
Boston Celtics every day from 1982 to 1986. It was a time when reporters
travelled with professional teams—flying the same commercial airlines, riding
the same buses, and staying in the same hotels. Shaughnessy knew the athletes
as real people, losing free throw bets to Larry Bird, being gifted cheap
cigars by the iconic coach Red Auerbach, and having his one-year-old daughter
Sarah passed from player to player on a flight from Logan to Detroit Metro.
Drawing on unprecedented access and personal experiences that would not be
possible for any reporter today, Shaughnessy takes us inside the legendary
Larry Bird-led Celtics teams, capturing the camaraderie as they dominated the
NBA. Fans can witness the cockiness of Larry Bird (who once walked into an
All-Star Weekend locker room, announced that he was going to win the three-
point contest, and did); the ageless athleticism of Robert Parish; the
shooting skills of Kevin McHale; the fierce, self-sacrificing play of Bill
Walton; and the playful humor of players like Danny Ainge, Cedric “Cornbread”
Maxwell, and M.L. Carr. For any fan who longs to return—for just a few
hours—to those magical years when the Boston Garden rocked and the winner’s
circle was mostly colored Boston Green, Wish It Lasted Forever is a masterful
tribute to “the Celtics from 1982–1986 [that] is so good even fervent Celtics
haters will have trouble putting it down” (New York Post). Read more Details Publisher ‏ : ‎ Scribner (November 16, 2021) Language ‏ : ‎ English Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 256 pages ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1982169974 ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 78 Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.8 x 9 inches Best Sellers Rank: #178,046 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #56 in Basketball Coaching (Books) #159 in Basketball Biographies (Books) #2,045 in U.S. State & Local History #56 in Basketball Coaching (Books) Quality Products This will be shipped securely Returns must be within 30 days - item EXACTLY as it was sent. Must have tracking number. Email us with any issues/questions. Thanks for looking! Fast and Free Shipping Shipping is free for this item. We get your order shipped out and delivered to your doorstep as quickly as possible. Commitment We are committed to making sure that you leave this transaction satisfied. That means having access to real people that get your questions and concerns answered quickly. Give us a shot and we will make sure that you will look to us again!